


Renegades

by crinklefries



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Alternate Universe - Space, Bisexual Steve Rogers, Bounty Hunters, Everything should always take place in space, F/M, M/M, Minor Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Past Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers, Pining, Rhodey in a leather jacket, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Space Husbands, Space Pirates, The Most Pining, space gays: the fic, the slowest burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-15
Updated: 2017-10-20
Packaged: 2018-08-31 03:02:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 108,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8561080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crinklefries/pseuds/crinklefries
Summary: Constantly teetering on the edge of fugitive status, the volatile, dangerous group of misfits that make up the crew of the Starship Avenger is the best bounty-hunting team the Nine Galaxies has ever seen. Led by Captain Steve Rogers, the Howling Commandos--name courtesy of one, Tony Stark--capture the dregs of society, risking life and limb to bring in criminals S.H.I.E.L.D. forces cannot. In exchange for moral ambiguity and a paltry sum, the Howling Commandos maintain an ever-tenuous understanding with the Interplanetary Governing System.Then they hear a fairytale. A $$100,000,000 bounty for a ghost that may or may not exist. To capture the Winter Soldier, the crew of the Starship Avenger find that they may need to become renegades themselves. [ An absolutely unapologetic, monstrous mash up of Star Trek / Hyperion / generic science fiction with a touch of Cowboy Bebop-style bounty hunters, ft. The Avengers. // Also known affectionately as; Space Gays: The Fic. ]





	1. Bounty

**Author's Note:**

> I have taken more liberty with this fic than I ever have in anything else. That's the beauty of science fiction, I suppose. This fic is absolutely an unapologetic, monstrous mash up of Star Trek / Hyperion / generic science fiction with a touch of Cowboy Bebop-style bounty hunters. The plot and set up has run away with me so the wait for actual Steve/Bucky substance might test you. Hopefully the rest of the AU world/plot/general banter will make it worth it in the end. Banter is my life's blood.
> 
> The rating will likely increase in the future once more mature content comes into play.
> 
> Thank you for reading and apologies in advance for any made up science fiction terminology that makes no sense or offends your Star Trek-loving sensibilities!

Once, when Steve Rogers was young, and his mother still alive, he had broken his mother’s favorite porcelain music box. He has maintained then, and maintains now, not that anyone ever thinks to ask him, that maintaining balance when the gravitational pull of one’s home podship shifts from 9.807 m/s² to zero gravity in ten seconds flat, while also holding a cherished family heirloom, and one’s mother’s hands, and being five years old, renders one blameless when, inevitably, one loses his grip on the aforementioned cherished family heirloom and it inexplicably shatters on the ground of the podship--inexplicable because of the physics of zero gravity. Or lack of physics? Steve’s always been abysmal at physics.

After the music box broke and Sarah Rogers was giving her son a rare earful about responsibility and the importance of being careful with others, she mentioned, in passing, that if Steve were to ever sneak items from her dresser again, she would send all of his belongings to Nidavellir, a planet, which was infamously ruled by dwarves, although it was unclear to Steve then, and unclear to him now, whether, like Svartalfheim, those dwarves were Dark Dwarves or not. Sarah Rogers told him the details did not matter, what mattered was that Steve’s favorite toy spaceship was going to end up in the rocky crevices of Nidavellir, where the dwarves would take his favorite toy spaceship underground, to cities of molten lava, and melt said toy spaceship to use for their dwarf weapons.

In retrospect, Sarah Rogers was not always the angelic human being that Steve often remembers her to be. Also in retrospect, this story, once Steve remembers it, reveals more about Steve’s inner psyche than he cares to really delve into.

The point being that his mother had oversold the shadowy terror of Nidavellir because now, peering around the corner of a tall, sweeping building of iron down a reasonably lit alley, Steve realizes that somewhere between his childhood and his current predicament, the dwarves--Dark or not--had gone rather corporate.

“Are you sure he’s stupid enough to hide in such an...obvious place?” comes a voice in his ear. The volume comes in and out in a burst of clarity and then pure static and Steve frowns as he taps his ear com.

 “Are these coms synced?” Steve mutters, tapping his more and then--when it gives off an unexpected burst of static electricity--softly curses to himself and winces.

 “Mine’s crystal clear,” comes another voice, this time female.

 "Of course yours is crystal clear, Romanoff,” the first voice comes back. “You think anyone’s going to risk giving you the bad bud?”

 “I have the bad bud?” Steve’s frown deepens. “Wait, why do we have bad coms?”

 “Because _someone’s_ been too busy building a non-functioning robot to fix the bad equipment,” the first voice says and Steve can almost see Sam’s eyeroll.

 “I resent that and you will too when this robot becomes fully functional and I replicate it for the entire crew--everyone except you, Wilson, and you can have the pleasure of having the defunct coms as well, not that anyone on board will miss hearing your inane commentary about a completely irrelevant and ancient vestige of a cultural norm that died out centuries ago--”

 “Football,” Sam’s tinny voice grinds out, “is _not_ irrelevant, the broadcast on Midgard alone--”

 “Jesus Christ, will the two of you shut up,” Natasha’s voice snaps.

 “Tony, we’re going to have a discussion soon about keeping our equipment functioning,” Steve cuts in. He checks his wrist, presses a button on the black band wrapped around it. The time glows up into the air, shimmering faintly green, military time telling him they’re dangerously close to running late. “The rest of you shut up, our window’s down to five minutes.”

 “So I _repeat_ ,” Sam’s voice is back in Steve’s ear. “Are we sure he’s stupid enough to hide in such an _obvious_ place?”

 “Can’t decide if it’s stupid or not,” a new voice comes on the line. “On the one hand, huge building. Very tall. Very shiny--”

 “Very in the center of the capital of Nidavellir,” Natasha adds.

 “Yeah. On the other, though,” the voice says. “You think fugitive on the lam and amateurs start hunting down old abandoned warehouses that are filled with meth addicts instead.”

 “Barton’s got a point,” Tony says. Tony, who is not on the ground. Tony, who probably has the conversation on speaker back on board, in his lab, with his terrible metal music blaring along simultaneously in the background.

 “Good thing we’re not amateurs,” Steve says. He shifts the shield on his back and checks the guns strapped to his sides. “All right, team. There’s $$3,000,000 on the line here. Don’t screw it up.”

 “If I get shot again,” Sam says. “Someone’s buying me pizza.”

 “If you eat any more pizza, you’re going to turn into one,” Clint remarks lightly.

 “Better not let me get shot then,” Sam replies grimly.

 “No one get shot,” Steve says. “In and out, just the way we planned. Make sure we capture him alive.”

 

The tall, sweeping iron building is home to the largest bank on Nidavellir, Mjolnir International. There are dwarves and humans coming in and out of the rotating doors in the front, the axel slowly spinning as people carry on the business of capitalism, completely unaware that they have an interplanetary fugitive in their midst.

 “How dangerous is he?” Clint asks over the com, quietly. Clint’s perched on the rooftop of the building across the street, an electricized bow in his hands, eyes scanning the 40 glass floors for their target.

 “Him? I wouldn’t worry about,” Natasha says. “His agents on the other hand...different story.”

 “Sam?” Steve asks.

 “I’m in,” comes Sam’s voice. “Scanning the hoverport now. Looks like it goes up to 40 and--oh, hang on. Floor 13’s conveniently missing.”

 “Isn’t that an old superstition?” Natasha asks.

 “Good cover story for a missing floor,” Steve says. “Clint, you get that?”

 “Thirteenth floor,” Clint confirms, training a bow at the corner window. “Nat?”

 “Tell me when, Cap.”

 “3, 2, 1--now!”

 Suddenly, it seems, all hell breaks loose. An explosion ricochets through the building from the corner window on the thirteenth floor, shards of glass and iron curling through the sky, a plume of white smoke twisting around mid-air and sweeping down with gravitational pull. Natasha has the mainframe to the building up on her screen and she types in the three missing characters in her code and earsplitting sirens reverberate through the building on every floor. She swipes up the next screen with her thumb, lets the code code sprawl out next to her and it takes just a momentary flick of her fingers to delete the necessary precautions, destroy the ten separate firewalls set up, as though firewalls mean anything anymore. The moment the code deletes, the hoverport banks go black, the virtual lifts up and down shut down. A few seconds later, a separate detonation sets off in each stairbank, cracking glass and shaking poorly laid foundation free from the terrible iron structure the dwarves had built barely two decades ago.

 “Cap, I see them, they’re moving,” Clint says urgently. He fits another bow into his arrow, aims it two windows down and lets it loose. Another small explosion at the chosen window, more glass shards, more chaos, more screaming.

 “We’re not going to have to pay for this are we?” Sam’s voice is out of breath. He’s rushing with the crowd in the lobby to get out of the building. He’s being crushed and cursing himself for not moving faster.

 “More moving, less talking,” Steve grits out. He’s in position, Sam’s wings on his back. Sam’s out within thirty seconds, which is actually thirty seconds longer than Steve planned for them to take.

 Sam reaches his hand out to Steve, which Steve grabs before jamming a thumb across the sensor, just like Sam showed him, and then the wings are off, propelling them dangerously fast from the ground up.

  _"Jesus_ , Steve!” Sam yells as he manages to scrabble and swing to grab onto Steve’s waist as they rocket up.

 “You were _late_!” Steve yells.

 Sam yells something in response, but the wind is assaulting their ears and the wings have them to the 13th floor in five seconds flat, so Steve doesn’t have much attention to spare for it. There’s a gaping hole of crushed glass and melted iron poles curling dangerously in while plumes of acrid grey smoke linger thickly around the wreckage. Steve and Sam barrel in, the wings folding neatly into Steve’s shoulders as his feet hit the ground, Sam rolling off him and to his feet, hands going to guns immediately, which is just as well because shots ring out before they have a moment to catch their breaths.

 They’re surrounded by at least half a dozen muscular, veritable blond giants, each packing an appropriate amount of heat for men of their stature, and at least a few half-aliens with hostile horns and tentacles protruding from their faces besides.

 “Someone’s overcompensating,” Sam mutters next to him.

 “Hey now boys,” Steve says, flashing them a tight-lipped grin. “No reason to make this hard on yourselves. Tell you what. You give us Sitwell and we let you take the rest of the day off.”

 A nervous, tittering laughter comes from somewhere over the shoulder of the fourth or fifth Blond Giant and Steve sees Sam visibly roll his eyes beside him.

 “You’re outnumbered by at least half a dozen,” Sitwell’s voice comes.

 “ _Man_ , you know you’re a fugitive, right?” Sam asks, waving one of his guns in the general direction of the voice. Immediately, the circle of Sitwell’s bodyguards tightens, guns flashing out in warning. “Jesus, relax. All I’m saying is, you’re pretty cocky for a guy who only has a $$3,000,000 bounty on his head.”

 A pause.

 “What do you mean _only_ $$3,000,000?”

 “You’re like our petty cash for the week,” Sam says.

 “You’ve been spending too much time with Clint,” Steve says to Sam, casually, as though there aren’t at least a dozen phasers set on him alone.

 “Hey!” Clint’s voice protests in his ear.

 “You’re _outnumbered_ ,” Sitwell’s voice comes again, like a whine, and Steve’s tired of waiting for their bounty. He fires a round into the nearest Blond Giant before Sam ducks to the ground and Steve pulls his shield and covers them both, a dozen particle beams bouncing off reinforced Asgardian alloy.

 “Clint!” Steve yells, as he and Sam roll apart, guns out, shooting at torsos and sweeping kneecaps out of the way. A moment later, there’s a third explosion about five windows to the right of them, spraying the entire floor with more pieces of glass and steel beams.

 “Nat, he’s headed your way!” Steve pants, flinging his shield out and knocking out two horned aliens while a third shoots from his left. He throws himself out of the way just in time, only to knock into Sam, who’s in the midst of strangling a Blond Giant.

“Got it, Cap,” comes Natasha’s calm voice over the com.

In the commotion, one of the Blond Giants had wrenched open the nearest door to the emergency access stairwell and he, Sitwell, and another Blond Giant had disappeared into it, dodging a round of shots and sending out an answering round themselves. It was a cowardly act, but Loki was nothing if not deeply skilled at gathering intelligence. They had planned for this. It was Sitwell’s own bad luck that he thought facing Natasha Romanoff was preferable to Steve Rogers and Sam Wilson.

 “Your master’s not going anywhere,” Sam grins at a three-horned bodyguard that has a phaser pointed straight in between its four eyes. “Well, I mean. You know, he is. But nowhere that’s gonna help you.”

 The bodyguard lets out an angry exhale of clicks and hisses.

 “Gonna help us a ton, though.”

 “Sam,” Steve pants in slight exasperation. His arm is bleeding and there’s a burn mark somewhere near his temple that Bruce is going to have a word with him about, but there are four Blond Giants lying unconscious at a pile near his feet. “Less talking, more containing.”

“Thought taunting was part of the job,” Sam remarks, smirking and ramming the side of his phaser hard into the bodyguard’s face after it starts lunging at him with a loud click. Its claws are outstretched as Sam crouches, firing two blasts of the phaser into its stomach. The bodyguard hisses a strangled shout from near the back of its throat and stumbles backwards over another unconscious Blond Giant.

 “Stop,” Steve grits out, dodging a shot from a Blond Giant and dodging the elbows of another. “Listening.” He sweeps the legs from out under #2. “To.” He picks up his shield and slams it into the face of #1 and then rolls out to Sam’s side while they let their guns take the two out permanently. “Clint.”

 The Giants thud to the ground. Steve grins. No more Blond Giants. The remaining aliens--three of them, all tentacled and slightly off-purple in color--look panicked.

 “Okay, feelings are starting to get hurt over here,” Clint’s voice whines over the com.

 Sam’s on the verge of answering when they hear a familiar voice over the set.

 “ _Hello boys_ ,” Steve hears Natasha’s voice lilt over the coms. Then there’s cursing in the distance and the familiar sound of another explosion.

 “ _Noooooooooo_ ,” comes Sitwell’s desperate wailing, just as another voice interrupts over the coms.

 “As enjoyable as this banter has been to while away time that could have been spent pursuing other, more worthwhile activities, I believe it is my duty to inform you that your positions and the bounty will be compromised in approximately 2 minutes and 32 seconds.”

 “You think you coulda shortened your message and saved us some of those seconds?” Sam says in irritation.

 “Mmm,” Loki’s voice drawls disinterestedly. “No, I do not believe so.”

 “You’re a fucking dick,” Sam says and Steve makes a quick mental note to have a conversation with his team about professionalism among space pirates when on mission.

 “Thank you,” Loki says, sounding genuinely touched.

 “Loki,” Steve says instead. “Wanna run that message by me again, but with actual details?”

 “Of course, Captain,” Loki answers. His voice is faintly condescending, as usual, but Steve doesn’t have time to decipher the inner workings of Loki Laufeyson. “The S.H.I.E.L.D. Enforcement fleet is approaching orbit rapidly. You have two--well, now, one minute and 46 seconds before they enter the atmosphere and your bounty becomes obsolete.”

 “Fuck,” Sam swears, just as Steve grabs his elbow and jerks his head toward the window.

 “Time to go, Falcon.”

 

 Sam doesn’t waste any time running toward the gaping hole where there used to be a wall of windows, his wings unfurling as Steve jams his shield onto his back and grabs at Sam’s waist. They hurl themselves out the window as another explosion ricochets from the first level.

 “Natasha!” Steve shouts and he immediately hears cursing back from her line.

 “I know, I heard,” she says. “Hold on, there’s a Ken Doll here that refuses to stay down.”

 “Where’s Sitwell?” Sam shouts.

 “Taking a nap,” Nat grunts.

 Sam flies them forward a league rapidly and shoots straight up to where the giant, gleaming chrome behemoth is floating in the air.

 “Now’s the time, Thor!” he shouts.

 “For the record,” Thor’s deep voice rumbles as the port begins opening, “I _am_ capable of doing more than pushing a button.”  

 “But what an important button,” Loki’s amused voice materializes again.

 “Shut up, Loki.”

 “God, I hate your team, Cap,” Sam mutters, although the sound is barely in Steve’s ears before they’re careening into the open port.

 “Natasha,” Steve gasps out as his feet hit the landing deck. He stumbles forward, letting go of Sam, the force of the landing making balance and the working of muscles a precarious thing.

 “Yes, I suppose I could help her back,” Loki drawls. “Although she has yet to apologize to me for her remarks.”

 “What remarks?” Thor asks.

 “Apparently you are too good for me,” Loki says.

 “Can’t hate a girl for speaking the truth,” Sam, who cannot for the life of him, not interject when he could be offering searing wit and sarcasm, says.

 “Can hate a team of assholes for _not transporting me and the bounty up_ ,” Nat’s voice comes, harsh and panting over the com. “ _This century, Loki_.”

 Loki’s response is an aggrieved sigh, but then Steve hears the lazy and furious clacking of a keyboard over the set and the grinding sounds of the off-site transporter activating. There’s a furious keening sound in response as Nat and Sitwell are caught in the transporter’s field. At the same time, Steve sees the S.H.I.E.L.D. fleet materializing, half a league away.

" _This is S.H.I.E.L.D. Enforcement Unit 17. We order you to halt immediately_ ,” an announcement blares out. “ _If you do not comply, we will force you to comply._ ”

“Shit,” Steve breathes. “Where are Natasha and Sitwell?” 

“ _This is not a request. We repeat: if you do not comply, we will force you to comply. Halt your actions immediately, unregistered spacecraft.”_

“ _Cap, we’re on board_ ,” Nat’s voice grinds out urgently.

 “ _Thor!_ ” Steve yells as the S.H.I.E.L.D. unit lowers its shields for fire. The ports slam shut as Thor pounds commands into his station and Loki jams down on the lever that throws _The Avenger_ into sonic drive.

 

Steve’s stomach twists with a deep jerk, his muscles contracting painfully as his body struggles to fill the gap between still motion and sonic speed. He and Sam are thrown off balance, colliding with each other and into the port walls. Sam curses loudly, his wings folding in on themselves automatically before they have a chance to get crushed in the collision.

 “ _Loki, you piece of shit!_ ” Sam yells, just as Tony curses “ _Thor!_ ”

 “And to think,” Loki says over the coms calmly, as though his body, too, is not being squeezed and released simultaneously. “I could have been taking a nap.”


	2. Midgard

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I only have part of this adventure written so far, so I was going to pace posting what I've written, but I figured having a 3,000 word first chapter floating out there with nothing else is low incentive to keep reading. So here is the second chapter, quite a bit longer than the first. The rest I'm aiming for a chapter a week, but I suppose we shall see where the writing process takes us.
> 
> Thanks again for reading! :)

At least a couple of hundred light years separate Nidavellir from Midgard. There are at least a dozen small, almost uninhabited planets that lie in the swath of space in between and a few large ones as well, including Jotunheim and Vanaheim. Loki watches Jotunheim go by rather wistfully and Steve thinks that on any other trip, Thor would suggest the crew dock there to rest and refuel before descending on Midgard to complete their business, but this bounty had taken them the better part of four months anyway and with a relatively small reward like $$3,000,000, it wasn’t worth the time or cost. Besides, they were all tired from their recently unrelenting travel schedule and a few weeks docked at Midgard was all any of them could look forward to for at least the next six months.

  
“Okay, Cap,” Bruce says slowly. He’s shining a light into Steve’s eyes to check for reaction times while a frown tugs aggressively at his features. “I know impulse control isn’t exactly your strong suit and don’t get me wrong, we’re all very charmed by your almost impressive lack of self-preservation, but I think my exact words after the last bounty were: ‘Cap, the next time we go after a bounty, please don’t shoot first, I don’t want to have to see you back in the Medical Port with another injury.’”

“Okay, Bruce,” Steve says, blinking away little spots of light as they appear in his vision. “In my defense, this is hardly an injury.”

Bruce gives Steve a thoroughly unimpressed look. Bruce has perfected this look. Bruce gives this look to most of the Howling Commandos--team name courtesy of one, Tony Stark. Bruce uses this look most on Tony Stark, incidentally.

“Do you, Steve Rogers, have a second degree burn on your temple?”

“It doesn’t hurt that much,” Steve protests, but his indignation is short-lived, because the moment Bruce sprays the area with the coolant, the sharp searing sensation dries his voice up in his throat. He hisses in pain.

“So to recap,” Bruce says. He dabs the area with a gel that he’s pushed out of a white tube to spread onto the burn. It burns hot for just a second before simmering into a soothing coolness. “I told you, last time, to not shoot first because nothing good happens when you shoot first. Because, in fact, every time you’ve shot first, you’ve come back to me with another injury. And I told you, last time, that I did not want to see you back here again with another injury--because of shooting first. And you did--tell me what he did again, Sam?”

Sam is seated on the medical table to the right of Steve. He got away from the fight with just a few light bruises, but Dr. Bruce Banner is nothing if not paranoid and thorough with his patients aboard the ship.

“He shot first,” Sam supplies dutifully.

“Traitor,” Steve mutters darkly.

Bruce sighs.

“The gel’s going to help cool it down and start the healing immediately. It’s not as bad as it looked but--no, don’t give me that look, you still got a second degree burn, Steve.” It’s hard to ever stay irate at Bruce, because the Doctor has the gentlest and more genuinely caring demeanor of anyone Steve has ever met. Certainly of anyone aboard _The Avenger_. Bruce pastes some gauze and tape over the wound and steps back. “It’s just a second degree burn and some bruising today. What’s it going to be next time? You have to be more careful than this.”

“I’m careful, Bruce,” Steve says. Bruce gives him the closest thing to a dirty look he can manage. Steve amends with a promise. “I’ll be more careful next time.”

“Uh huh.” Bruce doesn’t sound convinced at all. He turns to the sink to wash his medical equipment. “What’s the ETA for Midgard?”

“Loki says at least another two days.”

“Two days,” Bruce says quietly. “It’s been a while since we’ve been back to Midgard.”

“Yeah.”

“That’ll be nice.”

“For those of us who don’t have to deal with President Fury,” Sam smirks from his bed.

“So...for everyone except Steve,” Bruce says.

“For everyone except Steve,” Sam agrees brightly.

Steve sighs and passes a hand over his face.

“You are all, without a doubt, the worst crew a person could put together.”

“Cheer up, Cap,” Sam says. He hops off the table and claps Steve on the shoulder on his way to the door. “You’re the one who put us together.”

  
\---

**_  
4 years before._ **

  
It happened like this: one day, three weeks after he had dishonorably taken leave of S.H.I.E.L.D. and two days after a particularly bad bender, Steve Rogers had ended up in a bar on Midgard, in the old city of Brooklyn, where his mother had grown up. He had been halfway through a second tankard of beer when someone started throwing racial abuse at a guy just sitting at the counter, clearly waiting for someone, minding his own damn business. The guy’s eyes had narrows and his eyebrows had raised comically high and it was clear that he could probably handle himself, but, well--Steve had had a hell of a month and Steve was on day three of post-bender-produced misery and Steve had a massive migraine. Also, Steve hated racist assholes. The Racist Asshole had barely backed away from sneering in the other man’s face before Steve had taken a swing. Even buzzed his aim was deadly and the force of his hit brutal. The fist connected with the face, the face crumpled, the Racist Asshole crumbled, and the other man dragged Steve out of the bar before S.H.I.E.L.D. ground units could intervene.

“I could’ve handled that piece of shit myself,” the guy said, raising an eyebrow. He looked impressed regardless. Grateful. Maybe faintly amused.

“You shouldn’t have to,” Steve said with a sigh. He flexed his fingers, rubbing his smarting knuckles with the palm of his other hand. “Everyone deserves to be able to drink in peace without being racially abused.”

“You’d think,” the man said, definitely amused this time. “Then again, you white people have been claiming racism’s over since at least 2010.”

“Yeah, well,” Steve said with a flicker of a smile. “I’ve been trying to get around to apologizing for everything white people have said and done in the last few centuries, but turns out there are only so many hours in the day.”

The other man had laughed at that. He extended his hand.

“Sam Wilson.”

“Steve Rogers,” Steve said, taking his hand.

“I like you, Steve Rogers.”

“Likewise, Sam Wilson.”

  
They had taken their new acquaintanceship to another bar after that, something that put enough distance between them and the S.H.I.E.L.D. forces that had shown up to investigate the short-lived brawl. Sam Wilson, it turned out, was as astute as he was bitingly sarcastic.

“Little skittish there, Rogers?” he asked after ordering a round for the two of them.

“Let’s say S.H.I.E.L.D. and I are having some personal disagreements,” Steve said.

“Disagreements of the criminal variety?” Sam asked.

“Disagreements of the dishonorable discharge variety,” Steve said. Sam’s face had lit up at that.

“You’re military?”

“Ex,” Steve replied. “Recent ex.”

Sam clucked his tongue between his teeth and nodded to the bartender in thanks as he passed Steve his beer.

“Nothing worse than a bitter break up.”

“She took the house and the car,” Steve quipped morosely.

“Okay, but did she leave you the dog?”

“No. She took Dum Dum too.”

“Your dog’s name is Dum Dum?”

“He named himself.”

“Poor Dum Dum.”

Steve snorted and Sam grinned before clapping a hand on his back.

“I’m military too. Also former. Not dishonorable discharge, though.”

“Why’d you leave?” Steve asked curiously. “It’s a pretty nice set up, if you can turn your moral compass off for a bit.”

Sam snorted then swallowed, taking a deep drink from his mug.

“Can’t control who you lose,” he said finally. “Can control if you’re in a position to lose others, though.”

Steve understood that only too well. He clinked his mug against Sam’s lightly, in solidarity.

“To--?” he asked.

“Riley,” Sam said.

“To Riley,” Steve amended.

They drank in silence for a few moment before Sam back turned to Steve.

“What are you gonna do now, then? S.H.I.E.L.D.’s a territorial ex.”

“Tell me about it,” Steve said. He took another drink before straightening in his chair and rolling his shoulders. He was tired. He was ex-S.H.I.E.L.D. and he was lost and he was tired. “Haven’t given it much thought yet. Maybe I’ll follow my dreams. Become an artist. Or a digital cartoonist. Maybe I’ll become a pirate.”

“A pirate?” Sam asked, lips quirking.

“Space pirate,” Steve said, returning his smile. “If S.H.I.E.L.D.’s going to come after me, might as well fulfill that childhood dream of becoming a pirate captain. Think I’ll skip the eyepatch, though.”

Sam was quiet for a moment, eyes narrowing slightly, thoughtfully. Steve was almost too tired to notice, but he was used to noticing when he was being scrutinized.

“You know how to pilot a ship, Pirate Captain Rogers?” Sam asked finally.

“Yeah,” Steve said. He took a few huge gulps of his beer, bringing it to the halfway point with little to no effort. “One of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s finest. Kinda destroyed the curve in that part of the training program.” He grinned at Sam. “Why, you gonna offer me a ship?”

The look on Sam’s face was almost infuriatingly difficult to read. Luckily, Sam Wilson didn’t seem to believe in prolonging mystery. He leaned forward, close enough to Steve so that he could hear the whisper as Sam’s smile widened.

“As a matter of fact, Steve Rogers.”

  
\---

**_  
Current._ **

  
Command was situated at the front of the ship, a cavernous pilot’s cockpit of controls and levers that kept the Howling Commandos moving forward and, more importantly, from getting caught in S.H.I.E.L.D.’s net. Command was Steve’s personal safe haven on the ship, although he had to share it out of necessity with Loki, his navigator, Sam, his first officer, and Thor, his man of miscellaneous talents and brute force who had picked up technical and tactical skills just from growing up with Loki. When Natasha got bored of the Computer Bay, she would join them too, tucking herself into a corner of Command with a laptop and holopad, resuming her hacking activities while offering biting commentary for her own amusement. On any given day in Command, Steve could expect brilliant tactical and navigation maneuvers and endless amounts of sniping between Sam and Loki, and Nat and Loki, and, if they were fighting, Thor and Loki.  

As infuriating as Loki was to deal with, he was by far the best navigator Steve had come across during his travels. His indispensable skills made him irreplaceable, which the smirking Jotun knew and used to his full advantage. When Steve was otherwise preoccupied, Loki liked to sit in the Captain’s chair and act as though he was the commanding officer of their bounty-hunting pirate ship. Steve had come back to Command more than once to find Loki sitting in the chair, barking out orders to his stepbrother, a tall, broad, golden-haired former prince of Asgard. Literally, a former prince. Thor had a way of rolling his eyes at his stepbrother and shrugging off Loki’s mania in a way that didn’t mortally offend him. Then again, it probably helped that they were sleeping together.

Despite the successful mission, today was no different. Steve had expertly skirted around the Kitchen Bay--avoiding an exuberantly drunk Clint Barton and Tony Stark, who were always at each other’s throats, except when they united to try and get Steve drunk or laid--and headed to Command to assess their trajectory and maybe have some time to breathe by himself.  
  
No such luck.  
  
He keys in his passcode and the door slides open with a hiss to reveal Loki sitting in the Captain’s chair, back straight. He’s grinning up at his stepbrother, hand curled possessively into the front of Thor’s tunic. Thor leans over him, a hand on his shoulder, the other in Loki's long, dark hair, face hovering close. Loki slides an arm behind Thor’s waist and tugs him closer.

Steve sighs. _Best navigator I’ve ever met_ , he has to remind himself. _And an Asgardian_ _behemoth of a prince. Also, you recruited them, so you have no one to blame but yourself._

He clears his throat.

“Are your quarters not large enough?” Steve asks.

Thor’s eyes flicker up toward his Captain and he has the decency to look abashed, but Loki just grins his trademark Cheshire Cat smile. He licks at his lips, baring his teeth.

“They are not suitable for this purpose.”

“What purpose?” Steve asks and immediately, _immediately_ realizes his mistake. He opens his mouth to retract the question, but Loki’s too fast for him.

“Thor has a long-standing fantasy of fucking someone in command. Dominance and power dynamic issues are involved, I’m sure. We all have Odin to thank for that." His smile widens. "You weren’t grown fond of this chair were you, Captain?”

Thor groans audibly and shoves at his stepbrother while Steve groans audibly and regrets all of the life decisions that led him to this moment, in this room, with Loki Laufeyson. 

“Out of my chair,” Steve says. “And keep your fantasies in your quarters.”

Thor shoves away from Loki with an apologetic look at Steve, but Loki takes his time standing up.

“My, my, someone has not been bedded in a while.”

“Who hasn’t been bedded in a while?” a voice comes from behind him. The door to Command had slid open without Steve noticing. Natasha’s voice is dry and humorless as usual. That almost certainly means she’s heard everything and is incredibly entertained by the proceedings.

“Steve Rogers,” Loki says.

“Oh, well I knew that,” Natasha says. She slides past Steve. Steve’s eye twitches.

"I’ve been a little busy,” Steve says in his defense. There’s no winning scenario for him here, so he has no idea why he’s voluntarily offering himself to the sharks that are his crewmates. Maybe he sustained a concussion during Sitwell’s bounty. He makes a mental note to himself to ask Bruce to look into possible brain trauma.

“Yeah and the rest of us have had plenty of time on our hands,” Natasha says. She leans against one of the command centers, arms crossed at her chest.

“At least half of you are sleeping with each other,” Steve points out.

“Tony sees Pepper once every four months and he’s gotten laid,” Natasha points out. “Even Bruce.”

“What.”

“ _Even Bruce_ , Steve,” Natasha says. “At least within the last year.”

Had it really been over a year? Steve tries to think back to the last time he had slept with someone or even gone on a date without making it obvious that that’s what he’s doing. He’s clearly not successful, because Natasha and Loki smirk at him in unison.

He lets out an exasperated sigh and sinks into his chair.

“I’m busy,” he repeats. Then he flicks his hand out toward the screens surrounding them. “How about someone does their job and tells me how much time I have before I have to deal with Nick Fury.”

“We have one day, ten hours, and 21 minutes until we dock at Midgard,” Loki replies lazily.

“Has anyone told Nick Fury we have a business date?”

No one says anything.

Steve’s other eye twitches.

“Steve,” Natasha finally says. “I don’t know how to tell you this.”

“What.”

“You’re literally the only one with Fury’s personal phone number. The rest of us aren’t in the habit of being in touch with the President of the Interplanetary System.”

“I was hoping that had changed since we brought Stane in.”

“No, that bromance is all you.”

“Do me a favor,” Steve says. He reaches forward to dial in Nick Fury’s number into his command com port. “Get out of the room. And never mention bromance in a sentence about me and Nicholas J. Fury ever again.”

Steve can almost feel the smirks floating through the air as Natasha keys the door open. He hears Loki mutter something to her under his breath about _needs to get laid_ and her mutter back something about _I know_ and the door hisses shut to leave him in thankful silence.

Some days Steve almost hopes for a mutiny so he has an excuse to go back to ground and not deal with the ragtag group of assholes he calls his crew and friends. He muses about what it says about him that everyone he gathered to fly with him and Sam are, in some manner, uncontrollable and completely unbearable to work with for longer than a few minutes at a time. In the meantime, the line rings.

 

The ringing continues for ten seconds before a woman’s stern and slightly exasperated face appears in three dimension in front of Steve.

“Yes?”

“Hey Maria,” Steve says. He can’t help but smile at her. In the entire time Steve has known Nick Fury, he’s also known Maria Hill, and in the entire time Steve has known Maria Hill, she has never once not appeared exasperated with everyone’s general existence.

“Steve?” Maria squints at Steve’s hologram at her end. Her expression relaxes imperceptibly.

“It’s been a while. Are you well?”

“As well as someone can be when they have to deal with incompetent morons on a daily basis,” Maria says. She tucks back a stray strand of her dark hair behind her ear. “Speaking of incompetent morons--”

Steve flinches.

“Maria, wait--”

“No. Do you _know_ how much damage your crew caused, Steve?”

“I know, it wasn’t our cleanest mission, but--”

“ _Millions_ of dollars on Nidavellir from property destruction alone, not to mention a tricky diplomacy situation.”

“We didn’t mean for it to get out of hand--”

“Oh, well as long as you were _well-intentioned_ before costing the Interplanetary Government millions of dollars and jeopardizing foreign relations.”

“That was the last place we tracked him to, Maria,” Steve says, trying to explain. “It took us four months. You know how long the bounty was out on his head. No one else even came close.”

“Your faith in S.H.I.E.L.D. is touching,” Maria says dryly.

“I have faith in _you_ ,” Steve says uncomfortably. There’s a minute of silence that stretches out awkwardly between them.

Maria visibly sighs, but her shoulders soften. Maria Hill is devoted to S.H.I.E.L.D., but, more importantly, she’s devoted to Nicholas J. Fury. That distinction makes the world of difference to Steve--mostly because it makes her an ally and helps keep him from constantly being declared a wanted criminal by the Interplanetary Governing System.

“Can I assume this call means you caught Sitwell?” she asks after another moment of awkward silence.

“Yeah,” Steve says. “We’re about a day out, but we have him on board. I’m not handing him over to anyone other than Fury.”

“President Fury’s kind of busy,” Maria says with an eyebrow raised.

Steve says nothing.

“We have other agents for bounty transactions.”

“It’s Fury or Sitwell becomes a bounty hunter with the rest of us.”

Maria looks more amused than anything else.

“You know the line between bounty hunter and fugitive is a thin one, right, Steve?”

“I’m aware.”

“You’re exchanging a head for reward today and tomorrow you’re the head that’s being hunted.”

“Maria.”

Maria’s legendary restraint almost breaks. Steve can see the corners of her eyes twitch as she refrains from rolling them. “Well, you’re unusually lucky. President Fury just got out of a meeting and is currently glowering in the Oval Office. I can patch you through. Oh and Steve--”

Steve looks at Maria expectantly. She doesn’t say anything for a minute. A strange, almost cautious look passes across her face, but Steve can’t read it. His eyebrows furrow in question, but she just shakes her head and smiles. Then her eyes narrow.

“If the damage next time costs more than the actual bounty, _you_ are going to have to pay _us_ for catching the head.”

“Duly noted, Agent Hill.”

“Take care, Captain Rogers.”

Maria’s face dissolves in front of him as the tone dials up again. He waits almost a minute before the hologram of President Nicholas J. Fury flickers into existence before him.  
  
Fury looks as unimpressed as someone can manage to while wearing a dark eyepatch. He looks somehow older than the last time Steve spoke with him. It’s only been a few months, but there are lines there Steve hasn’t seen before. If the burden of being President is weighing on Nick Fury, he won’t say anything. But it’s hard to hide the way that weight wears a body down.

They stare each other down for just long enough for it to be significant when one of them gives in.

It’s the President, in the end.

“Well look what the cat dragged in.”

“Not a cat,” Steve says. “Space ship, technically.”

“You register that space ship yet, Rogers?” Fury asks.

“Right, so this cat has a bounty for you.”

Fury’s lips twitch in what could end up resulting in a smile, but twists into a familiar scowl instead.

“Yeah, Hill told me. Sitwell?”

“He was hiding in plain sight on Nidavellir.”

“I asked those damn dwarves at least a dozen times to put that planet on high alert for Sitwell. Should I ask how you and your crew tracked him down?”

“Better not to.”

Fury’s displeasure becomes more pronounced.

“I should deduct all the damage your team has caused from the bounty.”

A muscle twitches in Steve’s jaw.

“With all respect, sir,” he says. “Don’t do that.”

Fury snorts.

“Have you told anyone else about Sitwell? Reported in to the authorities? Broadcast it to any open networks?”

“No, sir. We’re going to dock on Midgard, make the exchange, and head out for the next bounty.”

Fury nods his head slowly. It’s the closest thing to approval Steve is going to get from the President. Fury scratches the underside of his jaw and watches Steve carefully, assessing him. Steve’s used to that calculated, one-eyed gaze. It’s a look that dismantles most, but Steve has been holding his own against that scrutiny for years.

“Is this all right with you, Steve?” he asks.

Steve doesn’t have to ask what Fury means. In a way, the question has been years in the making. He’s been hearing some version of it, if not in words, then in the tones of the people who meet him, who see him, who shake his hands. Ex-S.H.I.E.L.D. decorated Captain, Steve Rogers, once rising rapidly through the ranks of the interplanetary military service, now the self-declared Captain of an unregistered starship with a crew of displaced misfits who are prone to violence. It’s a story that doesn’t make sense--to anyone other than Steve.

“I made my choices, Nick,” Steve says quietly. “I don’t regret any of them.”

“I know you think you had to do this, but--”

“I _did_ have to do this,” Steve says. “Staying wasn’t an option.”

“Bullshit,” the President says. “There’s always another option. You always had a choice, Rogers.”  

“It wasn’t much of a choice,” Steve says evenly. He matches Fury’s glare with one of his own.

“So this is it. You’re just going to go from bounty to bounty? Losing years of your life on that piece of junk you call a ship for what--to catch criminals before S.H.I.E.L.D. does in exchange for a pittance? What kind of life is that?”

“If you’d like to pay us more for the bounties we bring in, we wouldn’t say no,” Steve replies.

“You could be making a difference, Rogers. You could be helping lives. You used to have a strong sense of justice.”

“Guess somewhere along the way that broke,” Steve says, jaws pulled tight. “Wonder how.”  

Fury’s glare deepens.

“I can meet you at 7. The usual place. Don’t let anyone see you.”

“Pleasure doing business with you, President Fury,” Steve says.

“Can’t say I feel the same, Captain Rogers,” Fury replies. Steve feels, rather than sees, the intensity of Fury’s one eye once again before his picture flickers out.

  
Steve breathes out through his nose, pinching the bridge of it to alleviate the tension building in his head. It’s never easy, seeing Nick Fury. It’s never easy being scrutinized so heavily nor judged for the decisions he had made and where they had led him to. At the end of the day, Steve had no regrets about leaving S.H.I.E.L.D. He barely had any regrets about leaving the planet. What regrets he does have, he keeps in a small, locked box close to his chest.

One of them, he thinks, is the fracturing of his relationship with his former commanding officer. Nick Fury had taken him into S.H.I.E.L.D. when he was too young to have any sense. Orphaned, without a home, a friend, or a future, Steve had taken to Fury’s training like a moth to a flame. Fury had honed his inherent talents, bullied out Steve’s latent leadership skills, and tried, rather unsuccessfully, to tame his reckless anger. He had made Steve a person others could believe in. Everything Steve was, he could somehow attribute to the skills, discipline, and care of that man. But everything came with a price and Fury’s price was S.H.I.E.L.D.

It was a price that had gotten too high to afford.

“You okay?” a voice gently drifts to him from the doorway.

Steve doesn’t turn around.

“It’s kind of scary how I never hear you.”

“If you heard me, I’d be a shit former ballerina,” Natasha says. She moves into the room, sits down lightly at the console across from Steve. “Light feet and all of that.”

“How much did you hear?” Steve asks.

Natasha shakes her head.

“Just came in,” she says. A pause. “I’m not spying on your private conversations, Steve. I just worry.”

“Thought that was my job,” Steve looks at her wryly.

Natasha snorts.

“It’s not. You just don’t know better.”

Steve shakes his head. His shoulders are tense, the way they always are after dealing with Fury or S.H.I.E.L.D. He has a hundred thoughts going through his head and only one or two of them ever make any sense at any given moment.

“Hey,” Natasha says softly. She rests a hand on his shoulder. “Really. Are you okay? I know you take the role of Captain very seriously, but you know you’re still human, right?”

“I’m okay, Nat,” Steve says. He’s not sure if he is. His voice doesn’t do a great job of hiding that.

“I know we mock you mercilessly and, don’t get me wrong, I’m going to continue doing that, but, you don’t have to do this alone. Let us carry the weight with you. Or find someone else to help you.”

Steve doesn’t know what to say in reply. He’s been alone since his mother died, her death creating a gaping hole in his life that he’s never been able to fill since. He’s not great at making friends and even worse at dating. In truth, Steve can’t remember the last time he really let someone else in or the last time he had really wanted to. Judging by the look on Natasha’s face, she can tell.

“I’m an expert at going it alone,” she says. “It’s safer that way. You protect yourself. You don’t rely on anyone else. The only person who can let you down is you.”

“But?” Because Steve can hear the “but” in her voice.

“But,” Natasha says. “It’s amazing how often you let yourself down.”

Steve looks at her. She’s all hard lines and biting words, Natasha Romanoff. She’s a puzzle that no one can ever get close enough to solve. She’s lethal with a weapon and even more devastating with code. A former ballerina and ex-agent for an organization she never talks about, Natasha is understated danger. She’s also one of the closest friends Steve has ever unintentionally made.

“We’re going to be on Midgard soon,” she says after a moment. “Get some sleep, Cap.”

Natasha gives him a reassuring squeeze before sliding past his seat and, quietly as she came in, slipping out of the room. Steve’s left in Command, by himself, watching the inky black space between stars and planets pass them by.

This is how each of his days end: with him, his console, his thoughts, and the seemingly endless stretch of whatever galaxy they are currently drifting through. The monotony is grating. The loneliness unbearable. Steve tilts his head back onto the headrest of his seat with a sigh.

 

\---

  
They dock on Midgard hours before the estimated arrival time, which makes Loki gloat, but the paperwork a mess with IPGS Border Control, which likes all ships to declare and register docking times with pinpoint precision even though Steve has argued with them, multiple times, about the insanity of expecting interplanetary travel to be completed with any sort of precision or regularity.

There’s a tense moment where Sam has to forcibly steer Steve away from getting into a physical altercation with the Border Agent, but luckily Thor’s diplomacy, born of years of being a Literal Prince and also years of looking like a golden-hued god, smooths relations at the last moment. The crew snicker at Steve’s inability to control his temper, money exchanges betting hands, Steve glowers deeply, and _The Avenger_ is docked at port with no further incident.

“I’m meeting Fury this evening,” Steve says to his crew as they gather to disperse. “We should have the reward by tonight. Then Sam, Nat, and I are going to look through the new bounties to see what fits our needs the most going forward. We stay here for two weeks, but keep your coms on you in case that changes. If I need you back on the ship, I expect responses within the hour. Try not to get yourselves stabbed, arrested, or otherwise injured or killed.”

“Should you maybe try taking that advice yourself, Cap?” Clint asks to snickers from the Worst Crew in the Nine Galaxies.

“I will leave without you, Clint,” Steve promises.

“I know you try to pretend I’m not the best Gun Runner you’ve ever met, Cap, but at this point it’s a little embarrassing because we both know it’s not true.”

Steve sighs.

“Meet at the usual bar, 10 pm. If you don’t show up, you don’t get your share of the bounty.”

The crew of _The Avenger_ disperses, leaving Steve with a stretch of empty time and a meeting with Nick Fury to not look forward to.

  
  
The docking port at the old Midgard city of Washington D.C. reminds Steve nothing of his home. It’s muggy and densely populated, but not in the way Brooklyn was in his childhood, with brownstones stacked on top of each other and Muslim-owned cornerstores with shitty coffee and assorted meats and bagels that had somehow survived centuries of crumbling Midgardian civilization. Washington D.C. is somehow more clinical than that, with too many humans and aliens in suits pushing government work and interplanetary political alliances, none of whom seem to want to stay for very long themselves. Since the Interplanetary Governing System moved the IPGS capitol to the hot climate of what used to be Midgardian Morocco, this Washington D.C., to say nothing of the old one, had become more of a transitory port. There were bars, but rarely any regular customers. There were apartments, but very few that offered more than a temporary, one month lease. It made Steve feel even more displaced in time than he had before he had given up gravity.

He waits in line at a chain shop that sells sandwiches and freeze-dried space food for the hungry interplanetary traveler. He watches the hologram of the Interplanetary NewsCast with the irritating, familiar face of Helmut Zemo, the INC’s most popular and insufferable newscaster. Steve has clocked more than one incident with Zemo, usually when Zemo has tried to report on _The Avenger_ and Steve has taken issue with it. Zemo’s newscast usually runs for a period of 25 minutes and runs through at least five different cycles a day. During the last cycle, he has a segment on criminal and bounty activity. Steve happens to be waiting for his chicken Caesar sandwich when the last cycle streams on.

“With a bounty at $$15,000,000, Rumlow remains one of the more notorious escapees from S.H.I.E.L.D. facilities.”

Steve frowns. A green-skinned, three-armed alien in a clashing olive suit eyes him interestedly from next to the counter. Steve ignores him. Or her. Or it? Pronoun usage unclear.

“Although brought in by a bounty hunting crew in May of last year, Rumlow escaped within a few months of his imprisonment, killing half a dozen officers from the notorious underwater facility all Class I Non-Mutant Criminals are kept in Midgard Quadrant. He has now been out for more than six months with no new leads.”

Steve feels pressure building in his temples. Sam had come close to losing an arm on the almost disastrous mission to Muspelheim hunting Rumlow down. _The Avenger_ had taken damage on the hull and Clint had lost partial hearing in one of his ears from the resultant explosions. He and his crew had put their lives on the line to bring in that bastard and S.H.I.E.L.D. had lost track of him almost immediately. The then-$$5,000,000 bounty somehow feels thin now.

“Hey, you look familiar,” the blonde-haired human behind the counter interrupts Steve’s displeasure as she hands over his sandwich and drink. She flashes him a smile, all teeth and charm. “Do I know you from somewhere? The programs, maybe?”

“No ma’am,” Steve says, quickly taking his food. “Nothing like that.”

“You sure?” she asks, raising an eyebrow. “With a body and face like that? Seems like a waste.”

Steve colors slightly. Before he can answer, though, the green alien grabs his elbow.

"Aren’t you Captain Steve Rogers? Captain of _The Avenger_? From the infamous Howling Commandos?”

Steve politely and quickly shakes his head, cursing Tony for giving them such a memorable and stupid name, and breaks from the green alien’s grasp. He hurriedly ducks out of the store as Zemo starts talking about a high bounty on someone from the old Midgard city of Brooklyn.

 

Steve thinks he should maybe call Sharon. Now that he can remember her name and the last time he saw her, he can admit to himself that Natasha had been right after all. Sharon was the last person he had been with and that had been well before their expedition to Muspelheim. In truth, it had been well over a year, although Natasha and Loki were never going to learn that. Sharon was one of the rare residents that lived in D.C. most of the year. She did some analyst work with S.H.I.E.L.D. and unlike most non-military S.H.I.E.L.D. employees, she preferred living near headquarters rather than teleporting in to work every day. Chances were high she would be here. It might relieve some stress to fall into bed with a familiar face--particularly one that expected nothing more from him.  

He scrolls to her number in his public com set and hovers, almost pressing call before abruptly deciding against it. Feeling a bit like a coward, he eventually opts to settle into the corner of a bar by himself instead. He orders a beer and some french fries--a secret and guilty indulgence of his--and watches Zemo on the third cycle of his newscast. If the strange, fleeting faces around him make him feel particularly alone, then he doesn’t admit it to himself. He has a ship of crewmates and sometimes friends and, once, a long time ago, he had a family and a home too. When he doesn’t have the ghosts of his past to keep him company, he has a loyal group of misfits that, he knows, would die for him.

Sometimes, when Steve is feeling particularly low, a heavy feeling sitting deep in his chest, it doesn’t feel like enough. But most of the time, when he remembers the things he’s done and the people he’s hurt, it feels too good to be true.

 

7 approaches somehow slowly, time moving through thickly viscous material, and rapidly, time also sliding through weightless fiber-optic wires, at the same. At half past 6, Steve finds his way back to the dock. Natasha is waiting for him near the bridge that connects the docking bay to the entrance port of the ship.

“You didn’t have to come back,” Steve says as the bridge clicks away from the bay to connect to the port.

Natasha lifts a shoulder in a slight shrug.

“I didn’t have anywhere else to be.”

“I don’t need a babysitter.”

“No one said you did.”

Steve looks at her with unguarded suspicion, but then lets his shoulders relax. He’s taking things too personally, something that usually only happens when he’s particularly stressed.

“You can’t come with me,” Steve says as the two of them step onto the bridge.

“I know,” Natasha says. “I’ll leave you both before you get to the warehouse.”

Steve nods and she follows him inside.

Between the two of them, they manage to get Sitwell to sit up in his constraints and lead him off the ship without too much extra force. If Natasha is perhaps a little rougher with him than she needs to be, then Sitwell has no one to blame but himself because he doesn’t stop cursing and whining until she sticks her phaser in the small of his back and aggressively threatens to shoot him unless he shuts up.

Natasha has an unmarked hovercar waiting for them just past the docking area and she shoves Sitwell into the back seat unceremoniously before the three of them peel off for the old neighborhood of Columbia Heights.

They leave her in the car half a dozen blocks from the meeting spot. Steve has his phaser rammed against Sitwell’s back, which makes the walk quiet and every footstep sound thunderous in Steve’s ears. The quiet is so pronounced that he can tell Fury is waiting for them because he can hear the other man’s quiet breathing. It is not an unfamiliar situation.

  
\---

**_  
12 years before._ **

  
He’s 17 years old when his mother dies. They’re living in their Brooklyn apartment, a rent-stabilized one bedroom built in the basement of a brownstone that is at least three hundred years old. It’s tuberculosis, which is funny because TB is a disease that has killed maybe a dozen people total in the last three hundred years. It’s not so funny when he’s setting the capsule containing her ashes into space, to drift forever among the stars and with hundreds of millions of other deceased and cremated humans, but he has a moment where he thinks of the sheer bad luck of it all and he has to laugh through his tears an hour later. There’s no one there to hold him.

His father had died in one of the great inter-galactic wars between Midgard, Asgard, and Jotunheim before the Interplanetary Governing System had rallied every S.H.I.E.L.D. Strike force in all Nine Galaxies to forcibly broker a peace between the three warring planets. His mother was all Steve had left in the world, so it was almost fitting that once she died, their landlord gave Steve notice that if he couldn’t afford rent for the next year, he had to move out immediately.

He’s 17 years old, an orphan with barely a box of possessions to his name and flirting with the possibility of homelessness, when he jeopardizes his already precarious situation by losing his temper. It’s in the middle of throwing the first punch that Steve hears, dimly, his mother’s exasperated voice in his head. _For the love of God, Steve, not in public._

 

It’s not his fault, in his defense. The guy was laughing loudly on his comset, talking about some gal he had taken out on a date in less than flattering terms. Steve Rogers grew up with a strong, saint of a woman who had put the fear and respect of strong women into his heart from a young age. It didn’t help that the jerk had slicked hair swooping across his forehead, bright blue eyes, and a smile that probably made all the gals go weak in the knees, probably so he could take advantage of them and laugh about it later. Also, his shoes were infuriatingly shiny, as though he was personally laughing at Steve Rogers for owning a grand total of two beat up shoes, three pairs of pants, and two shirts in all the world.

“Hey, pal,” Steve had said before he could think to stop himself, tapping the jerk on his shoulder. “You talk to your Ma with that mouth?”

The other guy, who looked maybe a year or two older than Steve himself, raised a perfectly shaped eyebrow. He had cheekbones that shouldn’t have even been real. Even at the tender age of 17 and not yet fully aware of his own sexual preferences, Steve could recognize how infuriatingly attractive this young man was. It made him angrier.

“Yeah?” the other guy said. “What other mouth you think I got to speak to her with?”

“She must be so proud,” Steve said aggressively. “To have raised such a prick.”

The other guy’s face had folded into an irritated frown.

“Hey, what’s your damage?”

“You are,” Steve said. “You and every other asshole like you. They should have signs for people like you so women don’t fall for your bullshit.”

“Pretty sure that’s none of your business.”

“What if I make it my business?”

The other guy appraised Steve with a look that Steve was increasingly familiar with. It was the discerning and condescending look of someone who saw 95 pound Steve Rogers, with his frail, bird-like structure, and was trying hard not to laugh about it. It made Steve’s blood _literally boil_.

“You got a death wish, kid?” the guy said. “Go home to your Ma before I send you crying back to her.”

It’s understandable, Steve thinks in retrospect, that that was what had made him snap. Somehow, this rich, slick asshole taunting him about his dead Ma so soon after her death with no sense of consequence snapped what brittle hold Steve had had on his temper to begin with. It took less than half a second for Steve to swing his fists out and less time than that for him to hear his mother’s admonition in his head. By that time, it was too late.

  
Steve and the guy were embroiled in a surprisingly aggressive fight when the sirens came in the background. The guy had slugged Steve in the stomach, which had knocked the breath out of Steve, but not before he had taken a surprisingly brutal swing at the guy’s jaw. The resultant connection had landed with a sharp thud. The guy stumbled back, then surged forward, slamming  Steve into the brick wall behind them by his shoulders. Somewhere along the way, the guy’s comset had fallen and gotten crushed under their feet. Steve’s head had slammed against the wall and it was only by pure luck that it didn’t crack his skull, the shove was so hard. Steve threw himself at the guy with a shout and they were in the middle of throwing punches with weight and kicks with passion by the time the S.H.I.E.L.D. Enforcement agents had sunk stunners into them both.

Steve had a bloody lip, a bruised cheek, a black eye, a dislocated shoulder, and multiple contusions by the time the stunner ripped under his already torn clothes. The other guy didn’t seem like he had fared better, his blue eyes locking angrily with Steve’s as they both fell into unconsciousness.

  
To this day, Steve Rogers thinks the most terrifying sight he’s ever seen was the one he woke up to that evening--a man in an eyepatch and a solitary eyeball glaring sharply and fiercely at him over the hospital bed.

“Are you stupid?” Eyepatch had asked him.

Steve had opened his mouth to answer, but the single eyeball had glared him into silence.

“Don’t answer that. It’s pretty clear you’re stupid,” the man’s jaw had worked furiously in barely contained ire. “My name is Nicholas J. Fury and if you have any sense of self-preservation at all, which, it seems, is questionable, you will agree to this very _generous_ one time deal I am offering you.”

Steve had closed his mouth. Then he opened it again, looking at Fury suspiciously.

“What deal?”

“Glad you asked, Steven Grant Rogers,” Nick Fury had said. “In exchange for not getting your stupid ass locked up in a S.H.I.E.L.D. detention facility like you deserve for that stupidass fight you just got into, I’m gonna offer you the chance to make something of yourself before you waste away into another parentless degenerate.”

Steve had started turning purple from anger almost on impulse.

“No, shut up,” Nick Fury had said. “Self-preservation, Rogers. Gain some.” A pause during which Fury had eyed Steve with a look that said he was regretting the words that were going to come out of his mouth even before they had come out of his mouth. “I’m recruiting you to my regiment. In S.H.I.E.L.D.”

Steve had stopped turning purple. Then his face flickered quickly between varying degrees of expressions: angry to confused to dumbfounded, with a few stops along the way at disbelief and perplexed.

“Don’t look so grateful,” Fury had said, conveniently interpreting Steve’s expression in the one emotion he had not actually passed through. Fury clapped Steve on his dislocated shoulder. Steve flinched in pain. “Yeah, Rogers. You gotta survive training first.”

“Commander Fury,” a young woman had appeared at the door to Steve’s hospital room before, again, he had a chance to say anything. She had dark, shoulder-length hair, sharp features, and a face that suggested how brutally efficient and competent she almost definitely was. “You told me to get you when someone defeated the scenario.”

“And?” Fury barked at the young woman.

Her lips curved into a smile.

“Agent Carter.”

“Why am I not surprised?” Nick Fury had looked pleased--or as pleased as he could look in an eyepatch and a generally displeased expression on his face. He had turned back to Steve one last time. “Offer expires at 8 am tomorrow morning, Rogers. If you don’t want to be a criminal for the rest of your miserable existence, I better see your scrawny ass at S.H.I.E.L.D. training camp. Hill will send you what you need on your comset.”

Nick Fury was gone from the room before Steve could ask him how they had gained access to his comset. Steve’s head hurt. His shoulders hurt, his cheek hurt, his jaw hurt; in fact, his entire body hurt. His life was quickly and inevitably spiraling out of the slippery grasps of his control. And yet, despite every other condition he was battling, Steve was pretty sure that what had frightened him the most was that Fury had been whistling on his way out.

  
\---

**_  
Current._ **

  
If President Nicholas J. Fury had looked a little older on the holocom, he doesn’t show it in person. His shoulders are a little hunched, presumably under the weight of being responsible for the Nine Galaxies, but he stands straight and impatiently, back to the brick wall behind him. He’s dressed in black leather, as usual, and nearly melts into the shadows. He is every bit as intimidating as Steve remembers him to be. Sitwell shakes slightly in front of him, but Steve is immune. He’s seen Nick Fury at his most livid and this is far, far from it.

“You’re late,” Fury barks as Steve and Sitwell come into sight.

“By what, two minutes?” Steve asks.

“Don’t get an attitude with me,” Fury says. “Four and a half. If I wanted to meet at 7:04 and 30 seconds, I would have said, Rogers, meet me at 7:04 and 30 seconds.”

“Sounds like a mouthful.”

Fury glowers at him. Then he moves his one-eyed scrutiny from his former protege to the sack of garbage currently cowering in front of him.

“Jasper Sitwell,” Fury says. “You ungrateful piece of shit. In case you were wondering why you never got that promotion, this has something to do with it.”

Sitwell opens his mouth, swallows thickly, and snaps it shut again immediately.

“When’d you figure out he was selling S.H.I.E.L.D. secrets?” Steve asks, curiosity getting the better of him.

“When his quadrant was the only one that wasn’t getting hit by the hacking grid,” Fury says. “This genius thought he was being real slick. Unfortunately for him, he’s the only brainless moron in his department. Then he ran, presumably because he thought we wouldn’t know he was guilty if we couldn’t find him.”

“Read a manual on how to be a better criminal next time,” Steve says lightly, pressing his phaser deeper into Sitwell’s back.

Sitwell scowls, but says nothing.

“Let’s get this over with. I have a space system to get back to governing,” Fury says. “Not that you’re going to offer to help with that.”

Steve smiles faintly at that as he shoves Sitwell forward.

“Don’t think you’d want me to, Nick.”

“That is President Fury to you, you ingrate,” Fury says. His tone leaves up to interpretation how much heat there is behind his words. He snaps his finger. “Hill. Come get this sorry imbecile out of my sight.”

There’s a faint whirring above them and Steve looks up in time to see Maria steering a personal-sized quinjet down from the roof. She lands it a few dozen feet from where the three of them are standing. Other than the whirring, the entire operation is almost silent. Maria Hill is and always has been Fury’s favorite agent. She’s also shown, multiple times over, why that has always been the case.

She pops open the door and slides out from the pilot’s seat.

“Steve,” she greets him as Fury unceremoniously shoves Sitwell over to her. Sitwell squirms and seems as though he’s had a passing thought of escaping, but Maria’s ironclad grip is on his upper arm almost immediately. “Let’s not be stupider than we already are, Jasper.”

Sitwell does what he’s proven he does best: he glares.

“Maria,” Steve nods his head. “Hope Nick’s not working you too hard.”

“That’s _President Fury_ \--” Fury tries to interrupt.

“Haven’t had a holiday in nearly a year and a half,” Maria says cheerfully over her the sound of her boss. “But who’s counting?”

“Next time you manage to slip away, come visit us onboard.”

“You know I’d have to arrest your entire crew for flying an unregistered craft, right, Cap?”

“That’s why I’m inviting you for vacation,” Steve says. His lips are curved up with an easy smile. “Do you want to ruin your first vacation in a year and a half by arresting one of your oldest friends?”

“God no,” Maria says. She’s shoving Sitwell into the back of the aircraft. “Do you know what a hassle that paperwork would be? I hate paperwork, Steve. Don’t make me do paperwork.”

“Are you two done?” Fury snaps.

Maria shoots Steve an amused look before saluting him, slamming the door shut on Sitwell, and slipping back into the pilot’s seat.

“Almost,” Steve says. He digs his holoset out of his pocket. He holds it out toward Fury.

Fury begrudgingly pulls his own holoset out. He taps it against Steve’s. After half a second, a tinny sound, like the chime of an old cash register, resonates from both sets.

“$$3,000,000, as promised,” Fury says with a grunt.

“Thanks for the petty cash,” Steve says with a grin. “Any advice on the next bounty?”

“Yeah,” Fury says. He shoves his holoset back into his trench coat. “Get a new job instead.”

Fury is halfway to the other side of the quinjet before his movements slow. He turns back to Steve. Steve thinks he’s going to say something--maybe ride him for his choices again, maybe demand he come back to S.H.I.E.L.D. In the end, it’s none of these things.

“Be careful, Steve,” Fury says instead. “Floating around in space, living just for the moment or the bounty--it’s easy to lose yourself in all of that. You forget what it’s like to have the ground under your feet.”

Steve watches Fury for a moment and Fury stares back unflinchingly.

“I’ll be fine, Nick,” Steve says.

Fury shakes his head.

“Yeah. That’s what they all say. Until they realize they aren’t.”

Maria pulls the quinjet up steeply the moment Fury’s back in his cabin. There’s another faint whirring of the engine, a faint puff of air against Steve’s face as it lifts off, and then he’s left again to his own silence.

  
Half of the crew is already halfway to drunk by the time Steve and Natasha make it to the bar. It’s barely 10 and Steve remembers distinctly telling them they were meeting at 10, but time is a subjective concept for the Howling Commandos and, much to his lack of surprise, it seems most of them had arrived prior to their appointed meeting time and had already begun the post-mission tradition of getting thoroughly wasted.

“The man with the $$3,000,000 plan!” Sam toasts to Steve as Steve and Natasha slide into the booth. Sam’s eyes are a little glazed, but he’s not tilting sideways yet, which means he’s still a good way from drunk. He raises a beer to Steve and proclaims, “To Cap!”

“To Cap!” comes a chorus from crewmates who _are_ in fact drunk. The foremost being, as usual, Clint, Tony, and Thor. Loki is nestled in next to Thor, Thor’s enormous arm slung lazily across his shoulders, sipping at a gin and tonic delicately, eyebrow raised, as usual, at the sloppy drunks around him. Bruce, who hates getting drunk, sits uncomfortably next to Tony, as usual, sipping a Coke while Tony boisterously explains something to him that, undoubtedly, he doesn’t care about.

“Are we rich, Cap?” Clint asks with a grin. He pushes a full mug of beer toward Steve. “Tell me we’re rich and we can retire from our day jobs.”

“Well, with the repairs to the ship we need--” Steve starts, to a full table of groans. Even Loki rolls his eyes.

“Oh my god,” Sam says. “Can you please get drunk immediately? You’re insufferable when you’re being responsible.”

“When is Captain Steve Rogers not being responsible?” Thor’s voice booms.

“Never,” Tony says. “Or always? What I’m trying to say is that Steve is always insufferable.”

“Remind me why I employ you?” Steve asks through a mouthful of beer.

“Must be my good looks and incontrovertible charm,” Tony beams at him.

Natasha snorts next to him. Clint snakes an arm around her waist and pushes a small glass of vodka toward her. No one comments on it, but Natasha leans slightly into him. It’s a nice sight. Steve tries not to feel the pang in his chest.

“$$3,000,000 with our 8 member crew makes an even $$375,000 each,” Steve says, ignoring Tony. “I’ve already transferred your shares to your individual accounts. Don’t spend it all in one place.”

“Planning on spending it all tonight, Cap,” Clint says instead. “Drink up, we’re determined to get you wasted this time.”

“This time?”

Steve raises an eyebrow. Everyone studiously avoids eye contact him. The silence stretches just past the point of irony until, finally, Loki speaks, with a roll of his eyes.

“There is a running pool.”

Groans from around the table. Loki smirks.

“A running pool,” Steve repeats. “On...if I’m going to get drunk?”

“Oh there are a few,” Loki says airily. He takes a gentle sip of his gin and tries to shoulder Thor out of his way. The giant blond is trying to harass Loki into keeping quiet. “Whether you will get drunk. Whether you will remember this night. Whether you will actually allow yourself to have fun.”

“Loki--” Thor warns.

“And my personal favorite--whether you will get laid.”

Steve curses his extremely pale heritage. He can never stop the color from spreading across his features.

“Do not feel bad,” Loki remarks lightly. “Most of your crew is very optimistic and loyal to you.”

Steve doesn’t want to ask, but he does anyway.

“Most?”

“Well, the smart money is with those who say no,” Loki says brightly. His smile glitters with mischief. “I have made a killing thus far.”

The table groans out loud and Thor nearly shoves Loki out of his seat. Sam and Tony, in the meantime, traitors that they are, are snickering violently into their drinks.

“Worst. Crew. I could have gathered,” Steve says through gritted teeth.

“Cheers!” someone, from the Worst Crew Steve Could Have Gathered, says and mugs and glasses clink aggressively against each other with the exuberant toast. Everyone falls into increasingly louder side conversations with the crew member they can best tolerate and, as the time passes, Steve loses count of how many shots of hard liquor his overly enthusiastic crewmates shove into his hand.

 

It’s around midnight and after at least three beers and as many shots--if not more--that Steve can feel someone watching him. He’s nursing a drink at the bar, Sam at his side--Sam, who’s started to tilt and is laughing a little too loudly into his plate of nachos--when the man slides to his left side. He’s dark, with glittering eyes and a shiny head, the flash of a golden loop in his left earlobe, and a black leather jacket pulled taut across finely muscled shoulders. He’s, well. It’s undeniable how attractive he is. His mouth curves up into an easy smile.

“Drink’s looking a little low,” he says. Steve looks at him, slightly blearily, half-amused, half-exasperated.

“You gonna offer to buy me one?”

“I was workin’ my way up to it,” the man says. “First I was gonna say it’s a shame to be at a bar with nothing to drink.”

Steve snorts. Over his shoulder, Sam slowly inserts a chip loaded with melted cheese into his mouth and turns with interest.

“I have something to drink,” Steve says. He gestures at the drink in question.

“But it’s looking a little low,” the man says, lips quirking up at the corners. “I just pointed it out. It’s all about the power of suggestion. Now look at your drink.”

Steve looks at it and then back at the man, eyebrow raised.

“Now doesn’t it look lower than it did a second ago?”

“A little,” Steve admits.

The man leans into Steve’s space with a grin.

“Exactly. So let me buy you a drink.”

“I can buy my own drinks,” Steve says. He raises his hand to wave down the bartender to prove his point. Although he’s listing to one side, Sam’s hand immediately flashes out, catching Steve’s wrist in a warning.

“No he can’t,” Sam says cheerfully. “Really. Steve’s incapable. Dead broke. Buy the man a drink--?”

“Elijah,” the man says with a smile. “Bradley.”

“Buy the man a drink, Elijah Bradley,” Sam says.

As far as wingmen goes, Sam Wilson is a pretty good one. Still, Steve is a little uncomfortable being bought a drink by a stranger with his crewmates so nearby. As if reading his mind, Sam scoops up his plate of nachos in one hand and his drink in the other.

“Take him home, Elijah,” Sam says, his voice barely hiding the snicker. “We don’t want him.” He’s already turned away by the time Steve, bright red at this point, tries to shove him. “Hey Barton! Stop macking on Natasha and get ready to lose at darts.”

Sam Wilson leaves him with the strange man at the strange bar with a newly ordered drink.

“So, Steve,” Elijah says, smiling into his drink. When he looks back up at Steve, Steve blinks, lost in the mischief of the other man’s eyes. “ _Can_ I take you home?”

Steve doesn’t say no.  
  
  
The next morning blares loud and bright. Steve jolts awake suddenly, a buzzing sound resoundingly pounding against his eardrum. The fly is dead before he can fully recognize what his hand has reacted to. He wakes up in a foreign room in a foreign apartment, with a strangely bright light streaming through the windows. He belatedly recognizes sunlight after a moment, having grown so used to the endless stretches of black space outside the ship’s windows the past four month stretch that the very concept seems mythical. That is where the functioning of his recognition stops.

Steve, honest to god, cannot remember anything that happened the night before.

He knows better than to make any sudden movements, but he does try to blearily close his eyes and clear the headache from his temples before he tries to assess his situation. Even in his extremely disoriented and hungover state, he can recognize that he is not with his crew and not on his ship. He can feel the rustle of sheets against his bare skin. That, too, is not the usual. There’s a brief second where his mind flashes to early in the night at the bar, Loki’s gloating face, and Steve feels smug that Loki is going to lose money this time. Then he realizes he can never tell anyone because his crew doesn’t know how to leave private or well enough alone. Then he remembers Sam Wilson.

Steve groans and shoves himself to a sitting position, head spinning. Whoever he went home with last night isn’t in bed or in the room anymore. He runs a hand through his hair, already sticking up at odd angles, and tries to shake the hangover out of his system. He thinks he lost count of the night somewhere around the sixth or seventh shot. He dimly remembers glittering eyes.

He quickly assesses the room, finding his boxers and jeans on the floor. He ignores the throbbing in his head to quickly pull them on. He finds his t-shirt flung over the back of a chair, on top of a faintly familiar leather jacket. He pulls it on over his head, relieves himself in the bathroom, and quickly splashes cold water on his face to wake up enough to find a way out of the apartment and back to the ship without anyone noticing.

He makes it out of the room and past the couch in the living room when he hears a snort from somewhere to his left. Steve looks up and winces.

A dark, bald man is sitting at the kitchen counter with a mug of coffee, reading the newspaper in pajama bottoms and no shirt. He looks amused.

“Hello,” Steve says.

“Hey,” the man says. Definitely amused.

“I thought maybe I got lost,” Steve offers. His mouth is dry, his tongue sticking to the roof. The sunlight is almost unbearable.

“In my bed?” the man asks.

“Mine looks very similar,” Steve says. “Mattress. Pillows.” An awkward pause. “Sheets.”

The man snorts again, takes a gulp of his coffee.

“I’m not askin' to spoon, don’t get me wrong,” the man--Elijah, Steve remembers suddenly, the name coming to him as he stares at Elijah’s left earlobe and also remembers, with some nausea, being rather enthusiastic the night before about that gold loop. “But a courtesy goodbye wouldn’t hurt no one.”

“Right, I--” Steve searches his brain for words. Instead, he finds flashes of the night before. There was the locked bar bathroom, the hovercab outside, pushing Elijah’s jacket off with some measure of desperation in the stairwell of his apartment complex. There were a couple of rooms in the apartment, too, that were maybe incriminating. He distinctly remembers ruining a couch cushion. Steve had had a very long dry spell. He winces.

He gestures at Elijah’s refrigerator. “Was going to leave a note. On the fridge.”

“Seems appropriate.”

Steve doesn’t think he wants to ask. Almost as though Elijah can read his mind, his lips curve into a wicked smile.

“Why.” Steve asks anyway, having no real sense of self-preservation.

“We had a nice time against the fridge too.”

Steve turns about as red as it is possible to turn. So add this strange man’s refrigerator to the list of places he had made poor decisions the night before.

“Coffee?” Elijah offers lightly.

“I think I should go…” Steve says instead. He looks awkward. He feels awkward. He thinks he has about two dozen resurfacing memories from the night before that he needs to carefully and methodically assess before using his authority as Captain of the _Starship Avenger_ to fling himself into the depths of outer space. Steve Rogers is not dramatic.

“Coffee’s not that bad,” Elijah shrugs his shoulders. They’re very nicely sculpted with well-defined muscles. Steve has memories of those well-defined, nicely sculpted shoulders. Steve has to leave. Right now.

“Uh. Thanks for last night,” he says. “It was fun. Don’t be a stranger.”

Steve’s hand is on the pressure pad to open the front door when Elijah’s voice cuts across the room to him.

“Safe travels, Captain Steve Rogers.”

Steve freezes. His hand is hovering over the pressure pad as he turns his head back toward Elijah.

“How did you--”

“There was a song,” Elijah says apologetically. “A chorus.”

“A chorus,” Steve says blankly.

“Your crewmates were very enthusiastic for you.”

Steve feels like he’s going to die.

“My crewmates.”

“Afraid so,” Elijah says, again, apologetically. He has the decency to look like he feels sorry for Steve. He should, to be fair. Everyone should feel sorry for Steve Rogers.

“How...enthusiastic were they?”

“Sam Wilson told me to pass along the message that you should be glad you won’t see them for another two weeks.”

Steve is not surprised that somehow, all roads lead back to Sam Wilson.

“Maybe I’ll get into a tragic hovercab accident before then,” he muses wistfully.

“That,” Elijah says, “is not at all dramatic.”

“I,” Steve Rogers says, “am not at all a dramatic person.”

He takes his leave of Elijah then, stepping out into the dappled light of a brisk and beautiful Midgardian morning. He looks at his comlog and sees 34 text messages waiting for him. He deletes all of them. Immediately.

 

Steve pulls his jacket close around his shoulders and lets his feet carry him to the hovercraft rental agency, where he’s rented a vehicle for the next two weeks. He can barely remember to look forward to his return to Brooklyn. Similarly, he can barely enjoy how, despite the photosensitivity, his muscles feel looser and his body more relaxed than it has in ages.

“No one can ever know,” Steve says out loud as he presses his handprint onto the scanner and swings his legs over the hovering motorcraft. He sets the guide to his old neighborhood in Brooklyn and hits the accelerator before his brain can threaten him with the memory of anything else.


	3. The Avenger

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope everyone has had a lovely start to the holiday season! I'm still trying to chip away to get to the gay, but plot keeps popping up instead. Hopefully the banter makes up for it. 
> 
> Thanks for reading! :)

Two weeks on Midgard passes quickly, partly because Midgard’s rotation is one of the shorter planetary rotations and partly because there’s no space-time lag when they’re grounded. By the time Loki steers them out from the docking port, Steve is buzzing with the need to track the next bounty. Sam and Natasha have knowingly accused him of running from his past, but Steve personally has his suspicions that Tony’s assessment that “Cap, you’re just an adrenaline junkie,” is the truer answer. Everyone else seems a little more reluctant to be back on board, except Loki, who finds Midgard to be endlessly dull and has no problem being vocal about this to his Starship full of Midgardians.  

“Do we have a route in mind?” Loki asks from his console. Everyone except Tony has gathered in Command for the debriefing.

“Sam, Natasha, and I are going to look through our prospects,” Steve says from his Commander’s chair. “For now, let’s drift through the Negative Quadrant.”

“The time loss from the NQ is hard to gain back,” Bruce says with a frown. He’s wearing a Hawaiian shirt and looks marginally more relaxed than he usually looks.

“We’re just going to drift long enough to find our next mark,” Steve says. “We’ll lose a month at most and we can gain that back splitting our time between the nearest planet and our destination.”

“God,” the door behind Clint slides open and Tony comes through. His sleeves are rolled up past his elbows and his arms are smeared with grease. “Do you ever think about how much time we’ve lost? Individually and collectively? How old are any of you anymore?”

“Loki is perhaps seven going on 107,” Thor offers cheerfully. His stepbrother rolls his eyes.

“Cap says he’s almost 30, but can we really be sure?” Tony asks. His gaze sweeps up and down Steve as he calculates something undoubtedly ludicrous in his head. “With all of his traveling, his inability to not throw himself into dangerous situations, and his temperament of an old man who’s never heard or said a joke in his life, I’m guessing--what, 97? 98?”

“96 and a half,” Steve says dryly. He gestures at Tony. “Everything okay in the Engine Room?”

“Did you know this ship is liable to fall apart on any given mission?” Tony answers. “I’m not exaggerating. Your ship is a piece of crap, Wilson.”

“I’m sorry,” Sam narrows his eyes. “Did you have a ship you wanted to offer us, Stark?”

“You know I’m a trillionaire, right?” Tony replies.

“Yeah a trillionaire without access to his trilllions,” Sam snorts. “What an asset to the team.”

“I’m sure the IPGS’s audit of dear old dad’s company will wrap up any century,” Tony says. “Then I’m retiring to Asgard and none of you are invited.”

“Hey!” Thor protests.

“Did you or did you not give Odin the proverbial middle finger before disinheriting _yourself_ from your own throne?”

“Well,” Thor admits sheepishly.

“Right. So, none of you are invited.”

“That will be a great loss for us,” Natasha says. Her arms are crossed at her chest. She looks unimpressed, as usual.

“Two weeks was not enough,” Steve mutters to himself. He sighs and waves a hand at Loki. “Negative Quadrant, Loki. The terrain isn’t the friendliest to traverse, so Thor, Clint, give him a hand. Let's not accidentally lose six months of our time again. If you need me, just dial me on the comlog. Do me a favor, though, and try not to need me.”

Loki gives Steve a lazy salute and Thor settles into his usual seat directly across from Loki’s console. Clint gives a heavy sigh and pushes himself off from the wall where he’s been leaning next to Natasha.

“I always get punished for not being a hacker, engineer, doctor, or owning the ship,” he says. “Should have listened to my mother when I had the chance.”

“Your mother wanted you to be a rancher,” Natasha says, amused.

“Like I said,” Clint says. “Should have listened to her.”

He collapses into a chair that spins to the left of Loki’s console. He plugs his holoset into the dashboard and scrolls through the screen to try and find whatever game he’s the high scorer on this week.

“Nat, Sam, Strategy Bay in 15?” Steve says. He gets up from the Command chair.

Sam and Natasha nod. Natasha keys in the exit code and the two of them file out with Tony and Bruce at their heels.

“Not that I am questioning your methods, Captain,” Loki says. “But perhaps look for a mark that brings us more than petty cash this time?”

“What can I say,” Steve sighs, his hand on the sensor to the door so it doesn’t close on him. “They don’t make criminals like they used to.”

  
The Strategy Bay is situated halfway between the Computer Bay and the Kitchen Bay. It’s really just a large room with wide windows that allow the crew to look out into the depths of space while they’re arguing about marks and strategy over an abnormally long table with a holopod built into the middle of it.

Natasha is already sitting in her usual spot near the middle of the table, with her keyboard wirelessly connected to the holopod. She’s typing away rapidly, lines of code that appear in light green font, scrolling across a 4 foot by 4 foot area in front of her. Her eyebrows are slightly furrowed, her lips pulled thin. She stops typing, reaches forward, and brushes aside two lines of code. There’s a particular segment that she’s interested in and Steve watches her take two of his fingers and pull it wide so that it zooms in larger.

Natasha Romanoff is the best hacker Steve has met in the Nine Galaxies. Their meeting was a pure coincidence, her skills running hacking grids against his S.H.I.E.L.D. regiment during a training that destroyed the data infrastructure their intelligence unit was working with. They had hackers on their own team--at least three or four of them--who, combined, couldn’t defend even a tenth of the wall that Natasha singlehandedly destroyed. To this day Natasha is a bit cagey about who she was contracting with when they ran that simulation, although Steve has his suspicions.

When Natasha is hacking or scouring for intelligence, she forgets to blink. Clint has waved a hand in front of her and been met with complete nonresponse. It takes minutes for her to snap out of wherever her mind takes her. Steve has never been so fiercely protective of someone it took him years to end up trusting.

She doesn’t notice his entrance and, a minute later, when Sam comes in with two bags of chips, she still doesn’t stop what she’s doing.

“What are the chances she’s not already researching our next bounty?” Sam asks. He stuffs a handful of barbecue potato chips into his mouth and offers Steve the unopened bag of cheddar and sour cream Ruffles. Steve is what some might call a health freak, but he takes the chips anyway.

“Don’t say that with her in the room,” he says as he opens the bag. “She’s going to know she has all the power on this ship.”

“Oh,” Natasha’s voice comes from her spot mildly. “I already know.”

Sam snorts and Steve sighs and sticks a chip in his mouth. Three hundred years, a few meteor strikes, the nearly complete destruction of the ozone layer, and a fifty year reconstruction period, and Midgard’s claim to fame was still processed foods. The cheese powder on his tongue is somehow simultaneously delicious and revolting.

“How many marks worth our time?” Steve asks.

“An even dozen,” Natasha says. There’s something in her voice though, accompanied by something in her expression that makes Steve think she’s hedging here.

“What are you not telling us?” Steve asks with a raised eyebrow.

“All in good time, Cap,” she says. She's finished keying in the last few strokes of whatever she’s working on and then she swipes the screen closed. She pulls up a different file, a digital folder that Steve and Sam can see the contents of. “Let’s go through them one by one.”

  
The way it works is like this: there’s some mid-ranking S.H.I.E.L.D. agent in Morocco whose job it is to scour through Strike’s records and the records submitted to them from various local law enforcement squadrons from each of the planets in the Nine Galaxies. The records are ranked according to degree of gravity of the crime, the amount of time elapsed since the crime was committed, success in capturing the criminal, the planetary system in which the crime took place and also in which the criminal was captured, and how much of taxpayer funds has already been diverted to capturing the low-life. After sorting the criminals currently incarcerated from those still pending capture, the list is then sub-sorted into which criminals are repeat offenders and what the nature of their prior acts were. Finally, the ranking of each criminal is matched with which enforcement squadron was in charge of the investigation, the success of that investigation, how hot or cold the leads have been since the act was committed, and, ultimately, how long it has been since any sort of enforcement was able to find or capture them.

Essentially, this mid-ranking S.H.I.E.L.D. agent spends a lot of hours in an office with a courtesy window, is given the title of Analyst and the accompanying mid-range salary, and tries to sort through hundreds of thousands of digital files on inter-galactic criminals before giving up and posting the most notorious and hopeless cases for the bounty hunters to knock themselves out with.

It’s not a sexy life for the mid-level S.H.I.E.L.D. analyst, but it’s also not really a sexy life for the bounty crews either. Sometimes there are skirmishes between different crews going after the same mark, but the fact of the matter is that bounty hunting is only a semi-lucrative venture and each crew has two dozen different factors to weigh in favor of or against any given mark. It helps that the crew of _The Avenger_ is the unparalleled best, most brutally efficient bounty team on any of the planets. The closest any of the other crews come is _The Warriors Three_ , who are some of Thor’s old friends and, frankly, some of the most wildly inconsistent bounty hunters around.

After they secure a bounty, the Howling Commandos cash in on the mark, take a short, but much-earned break from their interplanetary travels, and Steve, Nat, and Sam do the weighing of the factors for the rest of the crew. Only Tony has ever thought to complain about the set up, but the one time he was invited to one of the Strategy Meetings, he became so bored by the lack of science that went into the decision-making process that he had actually fallen asleep at the table and had loudly and aggressively snored his way through the meeting.

Steve makes the ultimate decision, as Captain, but Sam’s rational thinking and Nat’s hacking and insight make them invaluable to the process. They convene, the three of them alone in the overly large Strategy Bay, and Nat pulls up the list of viable marks for their given situation and they go through the options one by one while Sam plies them with snack and drink. It’s a bit like assessing potential suitors with the end goal being the worst first date imaginable.

  
“Mark One,” Nat says. She swipes a finger up delicately and a man’s scowling face appears to shimmer before her. She takes the mugshot and the file next to it and throws the images against the wall at the end of the room using just her index and middle fingers. The images stick, brightening upon virtual impact. “Ivan Vanko. Mid-level criminal from Midgard. Prior arrests for two separate counts of murder, one count of robbery in the first degree, and a dozen different incidents where he was charged with assault, but pled down. He was thrown into jail in the middle of the Sahara after his last murder charge. Escaped by building some metal suit that took out half the guards in the facility. He’s been out for the past two years.”

“What’s the reward?” Steve asks.

“$$10,000,000.”

“Not a small sum,” Sam nods at the man’s face. “He murder anyone good?”

“The wife of a high-ranking Russian politician.” Natasha says. “ _After_ he slept with her. ...and her husband.”

“I’m sorry, what?” Sam blinks.

“World’s worst threesome,” Natasha says with a faint smile.

Sam whistles and Steve shakes his head.

“Pros and cons?”

“Pros: he was last seen on or near Jotunheim, which is on our current trajectory without too much time debt and would shut Loki up for a few weeks. He also has a distinct face and build, as you can see, so I doubt he’d be able to hide easily. Doesn’t play nice, so he can’t integrate into the scenery like Sitwell did.”

“And cons?”

“Violent fucker,” Natasha says. “Huge. He’d be a piece of work. Also, all of the chatter on the Underground indicates he’s actually pretty intelligent or maybe working with someone intelligent, so it wouldn’t be a completely easy run of a mission.”

“Time estimate?”

“It took us, what, four months to catch Sitwell and he had the intellectual range of a microbot?” Natasha says. Her eyes flick up to Vanko’s file on the wall and calculates it in her head. “Six months easy. Maybe five if the intelligence about him being on Jotunheim is accurate.”

“Loki would be a good asset in confirming or denying that,” Steve muses. “Okay, put Vanko in the maybe pile. Who’s next?”

“Baron Wolfgang von Strucker. I’d say he’s upper-mid-level criminal. He used to work in one of the science branches of S.H.I.E.L.D., but was caught experimenting on test subjects in the middle of his post in Nornheim. Really grotesque experiments--chemical exposure, torture, fusing together different alien races from living subjects, that kind of thing. Turns out he was a known affiliate of the old Midgard Nazi party, but somehow that was never detected by the S.H.I.E.L.D. background check.”

“Or it was and someone on the inside never bothered to flag it,” Sam mutters. His natural distrust of S.H.I.E.L.D., born of his friendship with Steve and four years of dealing with the IPGS’ military and surveillance arm, is refreshing when Steve has to maintain some semblance of neutrality.

“Never assume the absence of moles and dirty agents,” Natasha nods. “Von Strucker was actually never caught. S.H.I.E.L.D. had all of the evidence against him, but he was smuggled out of Nornheim by his associates before they could tighten the noose. He’s been evading them for the better part of five years.”

“Why is he a potential mark now then?” Steve asks.

“Recent chatter on the Underground suggests a man by the name of Nikolaus Geist has been running illegal and brutal experiments on refugees out of an abandoned hospital on Alfheim.”

“Let me guess,” Sam says. “Chemical exposure, torture, fusing shit?”

“Etcetera,” Natasha nods. “If he’s on Alfheim that’s only a few months out of our way and we have contacts on that planet. It’s a good fueling and docking port for us.”

“How’s the bounty?” Steve asks, considering.  

“$$18,000,000. S.H.I.E.L.D. really hates Nazis.”

Sam whistles lowly.

“Taking a step up on these marks, Romanoff.”

“$$3,000,000 was barely worth it for the time we spent on Sitwell,” Natasha says. She reaches forward over her keyboard for the bag of barbecue chips. Sam hands them over wordlessly, then steals Steve’s bag of chips straight out from Steve’s hands.

“Higher marks are good,” Steve agrees. “Okay. Cons?”

“We don’t have that much intelligence on who he’s working with. He has to be working with at least a small network if he was smuggled out of Nornheim and has been experimenting, but off the grid for the past five years,” Natasha says. She throws a few chips into her mouth and chews thoughtfully. “So depending on who he’s working with, it could get complicated really fast. Also with a mark that high we might be inviting a bounty hunter turf war.”

“Yeah, let the damn Three Warriors try and take our bounty from us,” Sam snorts.

“I’m not worried about them,” Steve says, an eye twitching. The last time the Howling Commandos faced off with The Warriors Three, Steve had almost gotten into a brawl with Volstagg, the giant one with the unruly red beard. He wasn’t sure that if they met again over a bounty, particularly one priced as high as this one, even Sam would be able to hold him back from wiping the smug grin off the giant’s face. Sam also probably wouldn't bother trying.

“I thought you said you had a dozen potential names,” Sam says, looking between Natasha and Steve. “Are we stopping on number two? Is that allowed?”

“Are there better options?” Steve asks Natasha. “Give me your professional opinion.”

Natasha’s face, usually completely unreadable, hesitates for just the briefest second. If she wasn’t usually so immediate and unruffled in her answers, Steve wouldn’t have noticed. But the hesitation is almost impossible to miss.

“What aren’t you telling us?”

Natasha takes another potato chip and sticks it in her mouth. She chews it slowly, thoughtfully. Her bright red nails drum steadily against the table, inches from her keyboard. Her eyes flicker between Von Strucker’s picture against the wall and one of the unopened files hovering in front of her.

“There’s another potential,” she says, finally. “It’s a good potential. A significant one. But I want to be clear.”

Steve raises an eyebrow questioningly.

“It might not be real. It’s probably a fairytale.”

“His name is the Winter Soldier and he has a mark of $$100,000,000 on his head,” Natasha says. Sam and Steve still, their mouths dropping open. “The only problem is that there’s no proof that he’s real.”

“Natasha,” Steve begins. He opens his mouth. He shuts it. He leans back in his chair and gestures at the now blank wall at the head of the table. “Okay. The floor’s all yours.”

 

Natasha gets up from her seat, uses her index and middle fingers to throw the contents of her file onto the wall.

“He’s been a myth in the Underground for years. Rumored to be a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent gone rogue, but there’s no way to substantiate that either. He’s credited with over two dozen high-profile political assassinations over the past decade alone. If he exists, he’s efficient, he’s brutal, and he’s a ghost.”

“But there’s a bounty on his head,” Steve says. “How? If he’s not real.”

“It’s not...a completely public bounty,” Natasha says after a moment. “It’s a semi-public, semi-private bounty funded partially by IPGS and matched double by the Stark Corporation.”

“Tony’s company?” Sam frowns. “Thought they were bankrupt.”

“They are,” Natasha says. “Or they claim to be. But there are certain funds of theirs that are unassailable. The Interplanetary Federal Bank can’t touch them because of the way they were set up initially.”

“Why is StarkCorp so interested in the Winter Soldier?” Steve asks, frowning.

“Let’s say that Tony’s father didn’t think his own father’s death was as accidental as S.H.I.E.L.D. concluded it was,” Natasha says. “There are some rumors the Winter Soldier was involved in Howard’s death too. Again, nothing confirmed.”

“Okay, so an obscene bounty split between IPGS and StarkCorp. How many strings are attached?”

“Officially? None.”

“And unofficially?”

“Unclear.  As far as I can tell, there’s no malevolent intention behind it,” Natasha says. “The bounty is so high because the enforcement community wants the Winter Soldier caught, but they don’t think anyone will be able to do it.”

“They’re setting it up like a game,” Steve nods. “Tempt the bounty hunters into doing their jobs with a reward they’ll probably never see because no one’s expecting them to catch this guy.”

“We’re just hamsters running in place and our masters have made us believe we’re on a golden wheel,” Sam says.

“Weird analogy, but sure,” Natasha nods.

The risk of chasing after a ghost story seems immeasurably high for a crew working off bounty rewards to see through. On the other hand, the Sitwell mission was mostly scouting and waiting for the rat to flush himself out, which was about two dozen levels of adrenaline lower than Steve usually prefers. In truth, he misses the rush of a challenge. The $$100,000,000 bounty doesn’t hurt either, even if it is likely as fictitious of an account as the Winter Soldier must be.

“Tell us more about him,” Steve says finally, gesturing to the file. There’s no picture included. There might not be anyone to picture at all, as Steve has to keep carefully in mind. 

“Like I said, rumored to be ex-S.H.I.E.L.D. He defected to an unknown organization that seems to run against the system, but not in a good way. I’m working on finding more information about them. I have spiders crawling through the Underground as we speak.” Natasha raises her shoulder in a slight shrug. “I had a feeling you’d be interested.”

“Am I that predictable?” Steve asks mildly.

“Rogers, you have been logging hours in the Gym Bay that would cause a normal human’s body to stop functioning out of pure protest.”

“I’m not a cyborg,” Steve protests.

“Coulda fooled me,” Sam mutters. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say adrenaline’s your power source.”

Natasha snorts and gestures back at the wall to refocus their attentions.

“There’s not much more I can tell you right now. There are always rumors that the Winter Soldier has appeared, that someone’s identified him or his handiwork, but they’ve never been substantiated. Whoever is employing him saves him for the really big jobs. Assassinations that will change the political climate. Jobs that leave countries and planets on the verge.”

“So whoever’s using him has an agenda,” Steve says.

“Or he has his own agenda and sells himself to the highest bidder who agrees with him,” Natasha says. “Either way, he’s going to be a piece of work. _If_ we manage to find him.”

“What are our odds?” Steve asks.

Natasha looks at the screen. Her eyes scan the lines of the file in front of her and she closes her eyes, calculating the pros and the cons, the advantages that they have and the disadvantages that they face. She calculates things as a computer would, lines of code or statistical regressions running through her head. Her answer, whenever she’s able to give one, is always within the smallest margin of error possible.

She slowly opens her eyes and looks at Steve. Her lips press into a thin smile.

“Slim to none.”

  
The Gym Bay is a spacious area of the starship, which had once been an engine room. Before taking on the crew, Sam had gutted much of the interior of the ship and with Steve’s help and, soon after, Tony’s, they had re-designed the former layout into something more modern and fitting their purposes. They had decided to sub-divide the ship into different Bays for longer inter-galactic travels. The third engine room had been non-functional for the better part of a decade, after the first and second engine rooms had been upgraded with technology that made the engines smaller and run with more digital efficiency. The second engine room, in fact, had been turned into a sort of play room for Tony. The Mechanical Bay is one test tube short of a mad scientist’s lair. Tony and Bruce spend nearly all of their time in that Bay, spitting science and technology at one another away from crewmates who would rather take a phaser to the head rather than listen to the two of them debate Hawking’s Third Addendum to Einstein’s Theory of Relativity one more time.

The third engine room was given to Steve out of pity. Steve was sure that a crew of fit bounty hunter’s would need a gym area if they were to be traveling through space together for months at a time. Both Sam and Tony had exchanged significant looks that had not gone unnoticed. In the end, Steve uses the Gym Bay at least twice a day and maybe three times a week Sam, Nat, Thor, or Clint will join him, alternatingly.

  
Steve has pent up energy that he can only really channel through hitting something solid. He’s dressed down in his gym sweats and tank top, hands wrapped in bandages, and taking his aggression out on his favorite punching bag when Sam joins him.

“Hey Cap. Mind if I join you?”

Steve stops his current round of jabs and leans back with a nod. He wipes sweat dripping from his brow.

“Avoiding everyone in here?” Sam asks. Sam doesn’t usually go that hard on the bags the way Steve does, but he has bandages in his hand and offers one end to Steve to help him.

“That obvious?” Steve takes the end and begins wrapping it around Sam’s hand while Sam holds still.

“You’d think they would’ve caught on by now that your endorphin problem is only half the reason you live in here,” Sam says.

“It is definitely not my fault you all are a bunch of lazy assholes,” Steve says. He finishes Sam’s left hand before taking bandages for the right.

“It _is_ your fault that you know that about your crew and capitalize on it,” Sam says.

“It’s an open Bay,” Steve says. He wraps the bandages around tight. “If anyone wants to join me and harass me, they can feel free to.”

“No one but Thor wants to be in the gym the same time as you.”

“What?” Steve looks up, momentarily confused. “Why?”

Sam gestures up and down to Steve with his free hand.

“You’ve looked in a mirror, right? 100 pounds of muscle? Ring a bell?”

Steve snorts.

“You shoulda seen me when I was younger. 95 pounds soaking wet. 5 foot 5 inches on a good day.”

“You know, you keep telling us that and I just don’t believe it.” Sam takes back his wrapped hands and nods toward Steve to thank him.

“Luckily all the physical evidence was destroyed,” Steve snorts. “Not a single picture left.”

“What’s the point of the digital world if I don’t get to make fun of my own captain for having once been the size of an Oompa Loompa?”

“A what?”

Sam rolls his eyes. He moves himself to the middle of the room, into an area fenced off by thin, fibrous rope.

“You have got to stop watching those old war documentaries and start watching something relevant to our lives.”

Steve snorts and moves into the ring after Sam. The boxing ring was also Steve’s idea. There was an old boxing ring in one of the barracks when he was training at S.H.I.E.L.D. After his growth spurt kicked in, and Fury zapped him with the enhancers that allowed his growth spurt to kick in, Steve quickly found a talent for boxing. He still has his S.H.I.E.L.D. Boxing Champion golden gloves on a chain in the small box of possessions from his past.

Here he thought a boxing ring would be a good way to keep their hand-to-hand combat skills sharp. It didn’t hurt that boxing was a great way to channel everyone’s overactive aggression problems.

“Two rounds and then you talk,” Sam says, jumping up and down to warm up.

“Four rounds and then I consider talking,” Steve says.

“Ha, nice try. Three rounds and then you talk. _And_ next round of drinks are on you,” Sam says. He’s rolling his shoulders and squatting.

“Tell me what I get out of this?” Steve raises an eyebrow.

“Three rounds of boxing and thousands of dollars saved on therapy,” Sam smirks. “You’re welcome.”

Steve rolls his eyes, but he gets into position. Sam raises his fists and does the same.

Sam is, of course, the best sparring partner Steve has ever had. The other man can read Steve’s mood and thoughts and respond accordingly. They move back and forth, mirror reflections of one another, the same intensity and power in their crosshooks and jabs. When Steve steps forward, Sam steps back. When Steve swing with his right, Sam blocks with his left. When Sam swings high, Steve goes low. In the end, they shuffle around the ring together, panting and throwing jabs, round one ending as Steve lands a particularly brutal blow to Sam’s stomach. Sam stumbles backwards, winded, and rests at a corner of the ropes, arms raised in surrender.

After draining a bottle of water each, they meet in the middle, bump fists, and go again.

  
Three rounds later, Sam is lying on the middle of the floor, limbs spread around him like he’s a drowning starfish. Steve isn’t faring that much better, slumped on the ground next to Sam, only his arms behind him keeping him upright. They pant, breathing harshly as their bodies try to cool down, their muscles contracting in pain.

“Had some anger you needed to get rid of there, Rogers?” Sam manages to wheeze out from his position on the ground.

“You said not to hold back,” Steve pants. His ribs hurt where Sam landed two or three brutal blows during the second round. He winces when he tries to breathe in and the muscles there protest.

“Didn’t know you were holding back for an army of Chitauri, damn, man.” Sam doesn’t bother trying to move. Steve had swept his legs out from under him in the final round and when Sam went sprawling on his back, that was it, they were done. He also has a bruise on his cheek and a spot on his chest that hurts if he moves too much.

“Guess I have been a little stressed,” Steve admits. Finally, unable to support himself any longer, he pulls his hands off the ground and lets himself fall back with a quiet thud. His leg muscles are already aching. If either of them were smart at all they would do some cool down stretches, but they haven’t mastered the ability to move again yet, so they’ll both likely hobble around for the next day, much to Natasha and Loki’s delight.

“Wanna talk about it?” Sam asks, then shakes his head. “No. Not a request. Talk about it.”

Steve sighs, closing his eyes. His heart is still pounding in his chest and his head is a little fuzzy from exhaustion. The anxiety isn’t quite so heavy in his limbs as it was a half an hour ago, but it also never quite leaves him in peace.

“Guess I’m having an existential crisis,” he says finally.

“Yeah, I got that,” Sam says. “You’re not exactly subtle.”

“It’s not like I grew up wanting to be the captain of a starship,” Steve says. “Maybe I thought I’d be doing something more than bounty hunting.”

Sam snorts.

“What, you don’t think this is an ancient and noble profession?”

Steve shakes his head with a faint smile.

“Profiteering off of criminals isn’t exactly what I had in mind,” Steve says. “Not that there’s anything wrong with it.”

“No,” Sam says. “There’s plenty wrong with it. But there’s also plenty wrong with everything else.”

“I always thought I’d be a part of something bigger, Sam. I’d be doing my part to help the world from falling apart, somehow. When I see something wrong, it feels like fire under my skin. But I joined S.H.I.E.L.D. for that reason and.”

“And S.H.I.E.L.D. ended up being something different,” Sam says. “They’re an intergalactic government-oriented military, Steve. They were never going to be the benevolent, neutral saviors of peace that you wanted them to be.”

“I know,” Steve says. “I know that. I believed in what they were doing. I believed in their agenda.”

“But?”

“But.” Steve quiets, throws the back of one of his hands over his eyes and closes them. “Agendas change. You think you’re helping protect something and what you’re protecting instead is someone’s desire for power.”

“At least you have choice now,” Sam says, after a moment. “Maybe it’s not saving kids from asteroid collisions or species-wide extinction events, but you have the choice to catch some really bad guys. You have the choice to not do that too. If you wanted your morality back, now you have it.”

“Is that enough, Sam?” Steve asks.

“Depends on what you’re looking for, Cap,” Sam sighs. He pushes himself to a sitting position, then reaches his hand out to Steve.

“Guess I don’t really know,” Steve says. He takes Sam’s hand and Sam helps pull him to his feet.

“Gonna have a lot of time to do soul-searching if we start chasing ghosts.”

Steve pulls out of his existential reverie enough to roll his shoulders and consider.

“What do you think? Waste time and resources chasing a $$100,000,000 fairytale or stick to safer marks?”

Sam doesn’t say anything for a minute. He takes the time to start unwrapping his bandages, sweaty and slightly bloody that they are now.

“I think you’re bored,” Sam says frankly. “I think you’re bored of easy, meaningless targets and you’re spiraling into a bottomless hole of existential despair. You know we don’t care, Steve. We’ll follow you to the theoretical bottom of a black hole if you ask us to. You gathered a grew of dejected, cynical misfits who have nothing better going for them. The one thing we have in common is that we’re loyal to you.”

“Why?” Steve asks.

“Guess we just can’t say no to those baby blues,” Sam says. He unwraps his right hand completely and pats Steve’s shoulder. “Listen, if you want to go after a safer mark, we’ll be happy to run a routine mission. We’re always hard up for cash and a little easy money never hurt anyone. You’re always doing these pro-con lists, but what you don’t really get is that _we don’t care_.”

Steve frowns and Sam finishes his left hand with a shrug.

“But if you want to go after this ghost assassin, a man who’s killed world leaders and created havoc in systems that have nearly buckled under that pressure, a man who might not exist and we might not catch--well. Maybe we won’t get the payday we want, but we’re gonna have a hell of a lot of fun trying.”

Sam grins that grin that has always made something click into place with Steve, a little piece of friendship that only Sam can extend to make him feel like he has a place to call his own. He rolls his used bandages to take with him to his room. He claps Steve’s shoulder on his way out, squeezing tight, as though he knows that what Steve needs right now is reassurance that his quest for a higher purpose isn’t a crazy, futile decision that’s going to get them all killed.

  
When they reconvene for a crew meeting in the Strategy Bay a few hours later, Steve feels a little jittery, but more in spirits than he has in weeks. He’s showered, his muscles are loose, and when he keys in the code to open the door, he’s greeted by his entire crew, mostly sniping at each other, but in good humor. Natasha and Clint are fighting over a bag of carrots while Sam, feet up on the table, is trying to explain something to Bruce. Tony, head forward over a holopad, is typing something in furiously and ignoring Loki, who is trying to look at what he’s typing. Thor is futilely trying to get his stepbrother’s attention.

They’re a mess, his crew. They’re also some of the best, most talented people the Nine Galaxies have had to offer him.

“Cap,” Natasha says as he steps in. She’s won the bag from Clint, although she’s magnanimously allowed him to take a carrot from her. “You look serious.”

“I’m always serious, Romanoff,” Steve says. He smiles at her and then takes his place near the head of the table.

“Did you just have a moment of self-realization?” Tony blinks up from his holopad. He looks around at his crewmates blearily. “That happened, right? I didn’t mishear?”

“Where we going, Cap?” Clint asks, doing what he does best, which is ignoring Tony.

“Who are we to chase this time?” Loki drawls. Thor’s managed to convince him to settle in next to him. “A robber? A murderer? Perhaps a corrupt politician who has sold his home planet off for a few hundred billion dollars?”

“We never chase anyone half that interesting,” Clint says.

“Well you’re in luck then, Clint,” Steve says. “We’re not chasing anyone at all.”

The room looks back at him in confusion. Sam’s face widens into a smile. Natasha raises an eyebrow.

“Kinda,” says Steve. He grins. “This time, we’re going after a ghost.”


	4. Vanaheim

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I keep trying to bring you guys gay and the Avengers keep interrupting me because they can't seem to shut up when they're together. Anyway, a lot happens here and it was actually about 18,000 words, which seemed mad excessive for one chapter, so I've had to go and split it into two. This chapter is 1/3 banter, 1/3 Loki making Steve's life miserable, and 1/3 people shooting each other with phasers. Science fiction is fun!
> 
> Thank you for continuing to read and leaving lovely comments! :)

Nine months, three smaller, more mundane marks, and a bounty skirmish with the Warriors Three later, the Howling Commandos were still no closer to finding the Winter Soldier than they had been after leaving Midgard. Since then, they had traveled through the Negative Quadrant, docked on Muspelheim briefly, and nearly gotten declared as outlaws by Odin when they had misguidedly docked on Asgard and someone had recognized Thor at a shop near the port. Odin’s outstanding order to capture and bring his rebel son back to him had somehow proved more persuasive on the local population than Thor’s power of flirtation. It was only thanks to Loki’s quick thinking and fast reflexes that they had peeled out of dock as fast as they had.   

“It’s been nine months, Steve,” Natasha says to him as they take a break from Command in the Kitchen Bay. “As much as I want to find the Winter Soldier too, it might be worth considering devoting our time to Von Strucker instead. $$15,000,000 is nothing to laugh at and we could use the money.”

“Eleven months with the time debt accrued in the Negative Quadrant,” Loki says. He’s sitting in a booth chewing an apple and lazily flipping through the pages of an ancient Asgardian text as cast into his line of vision by his holopad.

“I thought we made that up when we docked,” Steve frowns. He’s pushing around cold noodles on his plate. They’re quickly running out of supplies on ship and the need to dock somewhere without incident is high on their priority list. Loki’s apple is the last of the fresh produce they had managed to snatch during their incident on Asgard. Steve’s flash-frozen space noodles have the taste and appeal of a lumpy, mildly edible shoe string.

“Our escape from Asgard took us through the Negative Quadrant, which negated all of the time we made up for on Muspelheim,” Loki says. He sounds bored. Then again, Loki always sounds bored.

“The point,” Natasha presses, “is that we’re running out of resources and options. You know our stores are drying up and our bank accounts are hardly overflowing. One or two more months on this quest and we’re going to be dead broke and eating one another for sustenance.”

“I volunteer to eat Stark,” Loki offers. Then he reconsiders. “No, he’s liable to cause me indigestion. I will eat Thor.”

Both Natasha and Steve pause, blink, and look over at the Jotun in confusion.

“What?” Loki blinks back at them. “He’s by far the largest and will keep me alive the longest.”

“You,” Natasha says, “are a very disturbing man.”

Loki flashes her his signature wicked grin and returns to his text. There’s an ancient tree shimmering in front of him.

“I know,” Steve sighs. “I know you said this was going to be a wild goose chase and it’s not that I didn’t believe you, but.”

“But the hunt is half the fun,” Natasha says. “I know.”

“Our crew is the best there is,” Steve says, wrapping a limp noodle around his fork and then putting it back down in disgust. “I really believe that. If we can’t find him.”

Natasha puts a hand on his shoulder.

“Steve, it’s been less than a year. You’re trying to find someone who’s evaded intergalactic authorities for a decade. I want to find him as much as you do, but we have to take on other jobs.”

“I know.” Steve sighs again and then pushes his plate away. He rolls his shoulders, the muscles aching at the joint. He and Thor had had a sparring session the day before. Steve always miscalculates how Thor’s size will impact the intensity of the sparring.

“It’s just. Once we devote our resources and attention to other bounties with high marks, that’s our time and energy gone.” Steve shakes his head. “If we stop looking, I’m afraid that’s it.”

“We’re going to find him,” Natasha says. She’s rarely reassuring when reality suggests otherwise--Natasha Romanoff has learned the hard way that there is no use building up hope when there is little to none. So her confidence here gives Steve pause. “It just might not be soon and it likely won’t be easy.”

“Anything new on the Underground?” Steve asks. He asks her this at least once a day. She gives him a sympathetic look and shakes her head no.

The last time Natasha’s spiders had brought her any information was at least four months ago. At the time, there had been an assassination of a Commander General on Alfheim. The Commander General had been speaking out about a potential allyship of Alfheim forces with S.H.I.E.L.D.: Strike forces, which would have strengthened S.H.I.E.L.D. and brought Alfheim--a planet on the outer branch of the Nine Galaxies--more fully into the IPGS’s domain. The crew had debated chasing the lead to Alfheim, but the reports of whether the assassination had been conducted by Alfheimian rebel forces or the Winter Soldier had been too conflicting to risk the months-long journey to the outer branch.

Natasha had sent her spiders crawling through their networks to Alfheim, but the trail had turned up cold. Not a single person had seen the assassination, nor had S.H.I.E.L.D. forces settled on any suspect as the most likely culprit. Most of the Winter Soldiers’ assassinations were sniper shots to the head, but even here, the General’s death was ambiguous. His blood had boiled him dead, but it was somehow unclear whether that was the result of a phaser shot set above Planck Temperature or a disease of the blood.

In any case, the trail had run cold and the crew had spent the next four months chasing around old intelligence that had led them nowhere. They hadn’t docked in nearly three months and Bruce had already had to treat Sam and Clint for Space Sickness. Things were starting to feel bleak.

“Okay,” Steve says finally. He sounds as resigned as he feels. There’s a hole near the pit of his stomach that makes him feel this keenly, this failure to turn up results, this fruitless, endless chase that had taken their time and energy and returned nothing, neither to their coffers nor to the galaxy at large. Just as Steve had feared, he was doing nothing, caught up in a mission that could have given him a purpose but that, ultimately, did nothing for anyone at all, least of all him.

“Tell the crew we’re docking on--Loki, what are we closest to?”

Loki looks past the holo of the tree he’s still examining. He has a thoughtful, distracted look on his face. Loki Laufeyson is, almost all of the time, a borderline pathological liar and a complete menace, bordering on not being worth anyone’s effort or time. However, there are the rare instances where Steve remembers why they entered into the agreement with Thor in the first place--why they chose to add Loki to the crew along with his brother instead of turning him over to IPGS like the rest of the bounty they caught. Loki is infuriating and impossible to decipher, but he’s also the single most intelligent being Steve has ever met.

“We passed the gravitational field of Jotunheim approximately one week ago.”

Steve winces. The Frost Giants are by far his least favorite beings in the planetary system. Even Loki’s difficult nature implicates his Frost Giant heritage, if not his Asgardian upbringing.

“I guess we’re docking on Jotunheim, then. You didn’t plan this, did you?”

Loki smirks.

“Ah yes, I did sabotage the course of your silly starship in order to orchestrate a loving family reunion with my _dear_ birth father. I do love him so, the Frost Giant Commander who sold me to Frigga.”

“You love your mother,” Steve points out.

“That resolves my father issues entirely, you’re right.”

Natasha rolls her eyes next to Steve and Steve distinctly regrets asking Loki anything.

“Right. Well, you’ll have your chance for that warm family reunion. Dock in Jotunheim, resupply the ship, and make course for wherever Von Strucker is.”

“He’s still on Alfheim as far as my spiders can tell,” Natasha says. She has her arms crossed at her chest and is leaning forward at the table.

“Stupid of him to stay in the same place for so long,” Loki’s voice floats to them. He has enlarged a specific branch of the tree and has a contemplative look on his face. “They never learn.”

“Luckily for us,” Steve says. He gets up from the table, takes his plate to the trash receptacle. He scrapes off the cold noodles and puts the plate into the Sanitation Receptacle slot above the kitchen sink. “Natasha, call Sam, Clint, and Thor and meet me in the Strategy Bay in an hour to plan how to run the mission.”

  
By the time he and Natasha leave the Kitchen, Steve is resigned to this, his fate. At least Von Strucker is an evil, torturous neo-Nazi, he consoles himself. Profiting off the capture of someone truly that genuinely evil is nothing to be ashamed of. Somewhere else, in the back of his mind, Steve also remembers the connection between Alfheim and the Winter Soldier. Perhaps they can kill two birds with one phaser.

As the door closes behind them, Steve has a glimpse of Loki, still sitting at his booth, a second holo of the same tree thrown up next to the first. A third holo, a three foot by three foot block of scrolling text shimmers to the right. Loki’s eyes are glittering with the sort of determination and insight that still makes him the most formidable bounty they’ve ever caught.

It’s only when the door’s closed that Steve recognizes the image for what it is: Yggdrasil, the Tree of Life.

  
Steve goes back to his quarters to shower first. The hot water does little to soothe his borderline existential crisis, but it does loosen his muscles enough for him to approach the Strategy Bay after with marginally less reticence than he would have otherwise. His hair is wet and combed over like his mother used to do for him, as though he were a dapper young man getting ready for a date in the 1940s.

He zips up the front of a Captain’s hoodie that Sam had bought from some novelty science fiction shop on Asgard a few years ago for Steve’s birthday. He’s pulling the strings on the hood as he approaches the door, thinking about ways to incorporate the Von Strucker assignment with the Winter Soldier mission. He thinks it can be done, if they don’t waste too many resources on Von Strucker. He’s almost positive someone--probably Natasha--is going to yell at him for delaying cashing in on their bounty once they have Von Strucker in their possession, but Steve can’t allow that to dissuade him. There’s a certain pull to the Winter Soldier assignment that he can’t place. It’s the breadth of it, the gravity of a political assassin reaching back a decade. It’s the adrenaline or the challenge. Maybe it’s just the search for a purpose that’s greater than petty criminals.

Steve realizes he’s giving in to the hovering existential crisis, so he keys in the code instead, chewing on the plastic end of a hoodie string as he steps into the room. The room is pitch black. Steve moves to motion the light on, when he stops. He turns slowly toward the front of the room.

“Loki,” Steve says cautiously.

The Jotun smiles thinly at him. He sits at the seat usually reserved for Steve during their all-crew meetings. His deep green eyes glitter in the dark, the dark irises reflecting golden light from the holos cast up in front of him. It’s the same three holos he was looking at earlier: two holos of Yggdrasil and a page of ancient text. Loki leans forward onto his elbows at the table, bemused face staring at Steve through the gold light.

“Captain,” Loki says slowly. “I have a proposition for you.”

Even if Steve was stupid, which he distinctly is not, he would have felt the danger rolling off of Loki. It is in the cold calculation in his eyes, a part of him contemplating, weighing the secrets he knows against what he can gain for leveraging them, and a part of him already seeing the end result of a game he won long ago. The thing about Loki that Steve cannot bring himself to trust isn’t the potential the Jotun has for cruelness nor his endless drive to achieve his own ends through any means possible, it is that Loki knows he can win because Loki has always won. A player who has never lost is not a player Steve can breathe easy around. Even if it is the best navigator he’s ever come across. 

Steve takes a seat near where Sam usually sits, a few seats diagonal from Loki, where he can watch him carefully.

“I’m listening.”

“I have something you would like.” Loki’s teeth glimmer in the dark. “And you can help me with something I would like. Let us make an exchange.”

“Depends on what you have that I want,” Steve says slowly. “Depends on what I would have to do to help you.”

Loki watches Steve closely, head tilted to one side. He nods slowly.

“Do you know what this is, Captain?”

Steve’s eyes flicker from Loki to the tree in front of him.

“Yggdrasil. The Tree of Life,” he says. “It’s how the Nine Galaxies are arranged.”

“Yes,” Loki nods. “And, no.”

Steve raises an eyebrow.

“Yggdrasil has been written as no more than a myth. An alignment of the planets,” Loki says. His face tenses as he looks to the holo of the tree. He reaches forward, but instead of touching it, he touches the text beside it. “The planets align this way because of Yggdrasil, not the other way around, you see?”

“Not...really.”

Loki lets out a puff of exasperated air.

“Yggdrasil is not a planetary alignment, Captain. It is not the tree of life, it is life herself. It is the source of all things, all power.”

“Power,” Steve says, slowly.

“The source of it.” Loki’s dark eyes gleam, reflecting the tree. Steve can almost see the crazy there, the uninhibited thirst for knowledge and power. “Magic.”

“You’ve lost me.”

The effort it must take Loki to keep from rolling his eyes must be immense indeed.

“I want magic. Not science, not alien technology, actual, real, unrestrained _magic_.”

“What are you going to do with this magic, Loki?”

At this, Loki shrugs.

“I do not know. It does not matter. That is beside the point.”

“Kinda seems like the entire point to me, but I’ll bite. Why is that beside the point?”

Loki blinks as though he’s carefully parsing through his words.

“Do you not feel bored, Steve Rogers?” he asks. “Of knowing how finite knowledge is? Humans, Jotuns, all of us creatures--we exist until a certain capacity. Technology expands and will continue to do so, but it can only expand so much and so far as we can imagine it. When you hit that edge, when you hit that wall--” Loki lightly taps his fingers against the table. “That is it. That is where we end.”

“You want magic because you’re bored,” Steve says slowly.

And in that moment it’s true, Loki does look bored. He has the universe at his disposal and all he wants is something that may not be in existence. That, Steve supposes, is the thrill. Steve feels a little queasy, not at the thought of Loki wielding immeasurable power, but at how closely and deeply Steve can relate to that desire.

“I want magic because I have everything else,” Loki says.

Steve is not convinced that Loki will not become a hungry, magic-wielding titanic force of destruction and chaos. But that is a worry best saved for after he finds this mythical power source.

“Say I believe you. Say I think there’s magic out there somewhere and I’m willing to help. How would I do that?” Steve asks slowly. “And what am I getting in return?”

Loki’s lips curve up slowly. He leans forward toward Steve.

“I know where Yggdrasil’s heart is. Help me find it.”

“And in exchange?”

Loki licks his lips. He sits back in his chair, looking amused now. He reaches forward and presses his thumb into his holopad. The images of Yggdrasil and the text disappear. Loki and Steve are immediately bathed in darkness, the only light coming from pinpricks of galaxies, stars, and planets, lightyears away, passing slowly and quickly outside the window.

“Promise to help me cut out Yggdrasil’s heart, Steve Rogers,” Loki whispers to him in the dark. “And in exchange, I will tell you where the Winter Soldier is.”  
  
  
Natasha doesn’t trust Loki as far as she can throw him. Granted, Natasha Romanoff has massive upper body strength and Loki Laufeyson probably weighs about the same as two sacks of potatoes in Midgard gravity, but the point is--she cannot, has not, and will not ever trust him. She has made this abundantly clear to Steve, in no uncertain terms.

It makes his stomach twist, then, when she becomes deathly silent after he passes the information Loki gave him from his holopad to Natasha’s own. A half an hour later, after she has read, re-read, scanned, and searched extensively through Loki’s intelligence, sent her own spiders out and gotten responses in return, she sits back in her seat. They’re in the Strategy Bay, her, Steve, and Sam, theoretically here to discuss Von Strucker and steering sharply into distraction.

“I don’t know how the bastard did it,” she finally says. “It’s unassailable.”

“It’s true?” Steve’s stomach drops. He feels a bit lightheaded, like he’s just landed from zero gravity onto Midgard.

“Loki’s intel is,” Natasha’s face is full of reluctance and the hint of regret, “bulletproof. If the Winter Soldier exists, he’s on Vanaheim.”

“Holy shit,” Sam says with a low whistle. “The rat bastard’s done it again. You sure he isn’t a sorcerer, Cap?”

Steve gives Sam a thin smile, his thoughts flashing back to his uncomfortable conversation with Loki earlier. He had considered telling Sam and Natasha about the second part of Loki’s deal, but had, upon thorough consideration, decided to forego the moment where they look at him with disbelief and deep skepticism.

He thinks about the brief moment of indecision he had, his usually reliable moral compass warring with a recklessly selfish desire that seemed to have sprung into existence overnight, before he had extended his hand toward Loki. In the end, it was a personal agreement between the two of them. Whatever Loki wanted with Yggdrasil’s heart and whatever means he needed to use to get it, he had Steve’s promise and no one else’s. Steve was not going to endanger his crew for his own ego.

Loki had understood that, implicitly, taking Steve’s hand and leaning close, mouth mere inches away from his Captain’s ear. _Promise me they will protect Thor_ , he had said, a request and a command in the same breath. Steve had understood that to mean the same thing Loki had understood his own handshake to mean: that he, Loki, like he, Steve, was searching for something beyond himself and neither was willing to catch those they loved in the aimless, destructive gravity of their personal planetary orbits.

“Steve,” Natasha says quietly, hand on his arm. “Are you here with us?”

Steve blinks, startled out of his reverie.

“Sorry. Drifted. What did you say?”

“I asked what you had to give him in exchange for this information?” Sam asks. He’s leaning over Steve’s other shoulder, staring, uncomprehending, at the files Natasha had pulled up from the dataport Loki had handed to Steve.

“What?” Steve asks.

“Loki,” Sam says, impatiently. “I know he’s a part of the crew and sometimes I don’t even hate the guy, but we all know Loki doesn’t do anything that Loki doesn’t want to do. So what gives? Why does he suddenly care about the Winter Soldier?”

Steve’s mind goes blank for a hint too long. Luckily, Sam doesn’t notice. Unluckily, Natasha does. She raises an eyebrow as Steve shrugs.

“The bounty’s high? The Winter Soldier is just interesting enough to draw him out of his constant state of boredom?” Steve leans forward to tap a particular chart in front of them. “Don’t ask me to explain Loki. We’ll be here all day and leave with no answers.”

Within the cells Steve has enlarged are carefully documented sightings of a man with a metal arm. Taken separately, the sightings would be inconsequential. In a system with nine inhabited galaxies and countless planets, a man with a metal arm is neither the most nor least interesting thing to have been sighted within any given period of five minutes. Taken together, however, the picture is different. The sightings are far and in between, but the dates are right, the times are right, the locations are right--always just far off enough from an event of note to be noticeable, but close enough to put a man within sniping distance.

“Whoever’s been documenting this evidence, they’ve buried it deep in the Underground,” Natasha mutters. “Even I couldn’t find it.”

“Is it the same person?” Sam frowns. “How can we know they’re not just pulling our legs?”

“Look at the data points, Sam,” Natasha says. “They’re all over the place. Even with accessible portals, one person couldn’t have been at all of these places and times at once. It spans ten years and every galaxy. Expensive hobby, even for a well-endowed conspiracy theorist.”

“The last known sighting is in Asgard,” Sam says slowly. “Kinda the same time we caught Loki, Cap.”

“No, Sam,” Steve says. “Loki’s not the Winter Soldier and he’s not personally funding him either.”

“Who said anything about funding?” Sam mutters. “A chaotic force using a weapon bent on disrupting power and the status quo? All he needs is to be able to give orders.”

Steve ignores Sam and turns to Natasha instead.

“Why Vanaheim? How can you be sure?”

Natasha reaches forward and taps on a scattergram that has converted the descriptive chart into data sets. The chart has plotted, with careful vigor, the trajectory of the Winter Soldier’s marks.

“They run in loops,” she says. “At first you think the incidents are spread out with no pattern. They’re political assassinations and coups, so it should be anywhere the system is destabilizing or shifting too far left or right. But that’s not the case. The data points prove the loop here. The first cycle through--the first three years--he bounces from planet to planet in a seemingly random order. Then the second cycle hits and--do you see?”

“It’s reverse engineered,” Steve frowns. “It’s the same order, except in reverse, with--”

“There’s a planet dropped here. In the second year, at this point he should be in Muspelheim, but he’s in Alfheim. But then the last cycle, it shifts one over again.”

“Original order, but now when he’s supposed to be in Jotunheim, he’s spotted on Midgard.”

“I don’t know if he meant to create a discernible loop,” Natasha shrugs a shoulder. “It’s not really detectable unless you think about it.”

Sam whistles lowly again.

“Thank God someone on this ship has a brain.”

Steve looks at the chart in front of him grimly.

“Might have too many brains on the ship,” he says. “Actually might be our problem.”

“This is the second year of his fourth cycle,” Natasha says, brushing over the banter for once. “So reverse order and then he’s going to have to skip left again.”

“If the pattern holds,” Steve says, feeling a little dizzy, “he should be on Hel, but--”

“But shift it left,” Natasha nods grimly. “He’s on Vanaheim.”

It seems so simple when she explains it that way, as though she had not taken a chart and a graph and mapped an otherwise undetectable pattern out in her head in thirty seconds flat.

“Nat,” Steve says, looking up from the charts and the files floating in front of his vision, like brightly lit specks of dust he can’t seem to blink away. “Can you get more information? Vanaheim’s a planet, not a two block radius.”

“Give me ten minutes and I’ll have every spider crawling through Vanaheim’s netspace and physical space,” she says. “All they needed was a smaller area to spin their webs.”

Steve feels a little lightheaded. The Winter Soldier is a fairytale, he has to remind himself. In the ten years since the ghost story appeared, no one has been able to verify that he exists, let alone come even marginally close to catching him. The chance that someone on his crew had information that was not only accurate, but proof of existence was infinitesimal to begin with. To now believe that their luck could be stretched into actual capture was, well, foolish at a minimum. Ghosts, Steve has to remind himself, don’t like to be caught.

“I want as much information as your spiders can gather,” Steve says cautiously. “I’ll shift course for Vanaheim. We have at least a few days to plan a course of action.”

“How do you catch a ghost?” Sam wonders out loud.

“You don’t,” Natasha says. The two of them look at her and she shrugs. “You offer him something he wants. And let him come to you.”  
  
  
Steve tells Sam and Natasha to gather Clint and Thor and meet him in Command in a half an hour. Along the way, he pokes his head into the Medical Port where Bruce is working on something undeniably questionable in a test tube.

“Hey,” Steve says. “You’re not going to accidentally engineer an incurable virus that runs amok on my ship, are you?”

Bruce takes his glasses off and wipes them carefully on his lab coat. He does so slowly and thoughtfully enough that Steve’s face falls, but then the Doctor smiles.

“Not today, Cap. But I’ll give you a heads up next time I’m in the middle.”

“Maybe a heads up before you begin.”

“Eh.” Bruce waves his hand in a noncomittal motion.

“You’ve been spending too much time with Tony,” Steve informs him. “Meeting in Command in thirty.”

Bruce raises his eyebrows as he watches Steve’s face carefully. Bruce, more than anyone, has an uncanny ability to see right through Steve’s bullshit.

“I’m not going to be happy, am I?” he asks.

“Depends on how much yoga’s been doing for you,” Steve says. As he ducks out of the room, he hears Bruce heave a heavy sigh behind him.

He thinks about passing the message along to Tony, but he knows Bruce and Tony have an almost eerily telepathic way of commuting, so he has no doubt that, unhappy as he is, Bruce will obligingly take care of reaching out to the mechanic so that Steve doesn’t have to deal with actually speaking to him personally.

  
When he opens the door to Command, he’s surprised to find Thor sitting at Loki’s usual spot. He’s staring at the buttons in front of him contemplatively, eyes occasionally flickering up to the deep stretch of space and stars ahead of him.

“Thor?” Steve asks as he steps in. “Everything okay?”

Thor is uncharacteristically slow to react. He watches the stars pass by for another moment before turning to Steve.

“Captain,” the Asgardian Prince acknowledges in his deep, pleasantly accented voice.

“What’s that on your neck?” Steve asks, waving at a sizable, dark bruise as he takes his place in his chair.

“Loki,” Thor says, unapologetically. “He was feeling territorial.”

“Ah,” Steve manages. He feels awkward. It’s no secret that Thor and Loki are together, of course, but, being Captain, Steve rarely engages in conversations about his crewmates’ relationships. He finds it’s usually better to know less. It’s harder to avoid when he is the one who unwittingly brought it up. “Well. He has no need to worry. No one would dare try to take you from him.”

“I would like to see the one who would try,” Thor chuckles. It’s quieter than usual and even though Steve is fully distracted, he can tell something is off.

“Everything okay?” Steve asks again. He watches Thor open his mouth to answer, but Steve’s attention is fleeting. Half of his mind is running through different strategies. If they dock on Vanaheim in five days, they have only a dozen or two possible plans they can employ. Their limitations in number further narrow their potential courses of action. Factor in whatever information Natasha digs up and how hostile Vanaheim authorities are to _The Avenger_ or, alternatively, how close Vanaheim authorities are to IPGS and S.H.I.E.L.D. forces and there are really only four or five scenarios they can hope to successfully run. Against someone who is a professional assassin and who, despite a decade of surveillance and sightings, can only be identified by a single metal arm.

It takes a few seconds before Steve registers that Thor has been talking to him and he, Steve, hasn’t heard a single word.

“I’m sorry,” Steve says. He sighs and rubs a hand over his tired face. “I didn’t hear a single thing you said. My head is somewhere else. Tell me again.”

“I do not want to burden you,” Thor says uncertainly. Steve immediately feels like the galaxy’s biggest asshole. Thor is nothing if not the most jovial and caring individual he has ever had the pleasure of knowing. He can think back to a dozen times easy when he had been having a particularly bad day or moment, when Thor could have had the sensitivity and tact of a fraternity brother from Alpha Omicron University--a veritable hell hole of the most overprivileged human and alien filth intergalactic diplomats and politicians could produce--but, instead, had just handed Steve a beer and sat with him in companionable silence and friendly shoulder bumps. Despite looking like the privileged Literal Prince and mountain of muscles he is, Thor is surprisingly insightful when given half the chance and a moment’s separation from Loki.

“No, it’s no burden,” Steve says. “I’m sorry, I’m paying attention now. Tell me what’s bothering you.”

He leans back in his seat, taking in Thor in all of his glory. The other man’s golden hair is pulled back into ponytail, his eyes shining a bright blue under the gleaming lighting, an apologetic smile curving his lips up at the edges. He’s hard to look at directly sometimes. Most days, even when Steve is lamenting every single person on his ship, he wonders how he got so lucky as to bring a Literal Prince on board.

“Father is ill,” Thor says, simply. “I do not know if it is serious. Frigga--Loki’s mother, my stepmother--sent the message this morning. He is on the cusp of Odinsleep.”

Having grown up on Midgard and not in a military or diplomatic family, Steve knows only the bare basics of some of the more important cultural distinctions between the main planets in the Nine Galaxies. Of Asgard, he knows that the warrior culture is strong and that they retain a strict monarchy. The Odinsons have been the ruling family on Asgard for centuries now, partly because they keep producing strong, golden-hued sons and partly because the Odinsons are said to carry some genetic aberration that allows them to grow stronger and live longer. The Odinsleep, if Steve can recall any of his poorly-taught and even poorer-learned multicultural interplanetary lessons in high school, was some medical procedure the Odinsons had developed to treat their ruling King when he grew weak or ill. It was said to keep the King in a deep sleep for long enough for his body to heal in order to preserve his longevity.

“I only know a little about it,” Steve admits. “Is it serious?”

Thor rolls a shoulder with a slight shrug.

“Potentially. I do not know from what father suffers. The nature of the illness defines for how long he will sleep. The graver the illness, the longer the Odinsleep.”

“So it could be a week or--”

“It could be years,” Thor confirms.

“I’m sorry,” Steve says. “That has to be difficult for you, especially since you and Odin aren’t talking.”

Thor watches Steve, his mouth turning down at the corners.

“Were it that simple,” he says, almost sadly. The sound is unnatural for him and it makes Steve stop and pay attention-- _really_ pay attention. “If Odin is resting, he will need another to take his place on the throne. Frigga would be the natural choice, but Asgard is old and patriarchal in the worst ways. They will not let a Queen rule.”

Steve doesn’t know why it’s taken him so long to realize what Thor is trying to say. He’s been so invested in his own problems, that he hasn’t taken a moment to stop and think about what it must be like to try to shake something that isn’t a ghost, but a tangible responsibility that will not go away.

“You or Loki,” Steve says, slowly.

“Me,” Thor answers, sadly. “Loki is--”

Thor frowns again and he almost looks guilty this time.

“I love him, Steve Rogers,” he says. “I love my stepbrother dearly, in all the ways I can love him. But he only wants that which he cannot have. Once he has what he wants, he wants it no longer. That is not suitable for a King.”

Steve wonders, acutely, if Thor knows more than he lets on.

“Loki is the cleverest creature in the Nine Galaxies,” Thor says. “But he is not fit to be King. He would tear Asgard apart and allow Asgard to tear him apart.”

Steve has a flash of memory: two years ago, on Asgard, when a crew of just himself, Sam, Tony, Natasha, and Clint chased a bounty, the highest they had seen by far. It was for a Jotun-born Asgardian Prince who had tried to cause planetary instability on Asgard by attempting to forcibly wrest the throne from Odin and causing general chaos and mayhem until he was captured and locked within the dungeons. This demon, a trickster, too clever by half, had outwitted the guards and some dignitaries besides, escaped Odin’s dungeons and disappeared into the streets of Asgard. By the time the Howling Commandos had caught him, Loki had managed to destroy two villages and trick at least three planetary ambassadors into granting him asylum on their planets.

He had nearly set fire to _Th_ _e Avenger_ when they came for him. Steve himself had Loki pinned against a wall, phaser set at his throat, when he had been thrown back by an unrelenting, massive force. Thor had been the angriest Steve has ever seen him, a veritable force of protective destruction. At first Steve had assumed the anger was directed at him, but his wrath was reserved for his brother instead. Loki’s skin had turned Jotun blue under Thor’s grasp that day. It was not a relationship Steve understood then, nor now.

Steve had pulled Thor off of Loki and and then Sam had pulled Thor off of Steve and it was only by Natasha and Clint’s phasers that Thor had finally relented. Somehow, in ways Steve could never explain again, in the end they had agreed to take Thor aboard, a runaway Asgardian Prince and the heir apparent to Odin’s throne, on condition they took his stepbrother in as well. In exchange, they lost their bounty and gained the best navigator Steve had ever met during his travels. Every few months, Loki still checks the criminal bulletins and snickers at the massive bounty still floating around on his head.

“Hey,” Steve says. He reaches forward, meaning to reassure Thor, to tell him there’s nothing he _has_ to do. What he says instead is something that he’s known, maybe, all along, but never realized until just now. “You traded your throne for your brother.”

Thor stills, quiet at that. When he moves again, it’s with a faint smile.

“Loki would call me a sentimental fool. In truth, there is no point in ruling if he is not at my side,” he says. “But that can never be so. Loki would tear Asgard apart and allow Asgard to tear him apart.”

“You really love him,” Steve says.

“I do,” Thor answers. “He is the entirety of my heart.”

Steve tries to understand, but can’t bring himself to, in the same way anyone who’s never experienced the aching chasms of love cannot. Not really, anyway.

“What are you going to do then?” he asks quietly.

“I do not know,” Thor admits. “I am Odin’s heir. Even if it were not for Loki, I no longer wish to be King. But I am Father’s _only_ heir. Without me there is no Odinson on the throne. Would I destroy Asgard with my selfishness?”

Steve gives Thor a thin smile in return. That, he can understand.

“How much time do you have left?”

“I do not know.”

“Does Loki know?”

“He must not,” Thor says. He runs a hand through his hair, shaking the ponytail loose. Golden hair falls across his broad shoulders. It strikes Steve again, as it often does, that Thor could be a veritable god if he tried. “If he does, all will be ruined. He will surely seek the destruction of Odin and Asgard and so, himself.”

Steve thinks again to Loki’s glittering eyes, to the keen desire and hunger on his face as he spoke of Yggdrasil’s heart. He’s a bad person for not telling Thor, he’s almost sure of it. But it’s not his secret to tell--not until he’s sure Loki’s secret will destroy them after all.

“You’ll let me know?” Steve asks instead. “If you need to leave?”

“I will let you know,” Thor nods. “Although I do not desire to. It is peaceful here, in space, with you and the others. Even when we are chasing a mark and all goes wrong, I feel at home in a way I cannot place.”

“Yeah,” Steve breathes out. His eyes drift out the window, taking in all the murky black around them. “I know the feeling.”  
  
  
The rest of the crew joins them in Command at exactly the appointed time, except for Tony, who is two minutes late and complains that he’s always the last to hear about team meetings. When Loki arrives, Steve’s eyes flicker to him, but if the Jotun notices, he ignores him, choosing, instead, to sit on Thor’s lap when Thor is too lazy to switch seats back to his own console. Thor’s thick arms encircle Loki’s narrow waist and his large hands rests on his stepbrother’s stomach. Thor is always protective of Loki in a way that Loki never needs, but is nice to watch, if Steve doesn’t think about it too hard. If anyone notices the matching bruise on Loki’s neck, no one says anything.

“Cap,” Clint says, with a nod in Steve’s direction. “There’s a rumor going around that the last nine months haven’t been a complete waste of time.”

“You know what they say about rumors,” Tony says. Clint raises an eyebrow at him and Tony turns out his hands in a _what?_ gesture. “Sometimes they’re true.”

“We have five days before we reach Vanaheim,” Steve says. From his chair, he can see the faces of his crew around him. Each look at him attentively and not without some measure of suspicion.

“Vanaheim?” Bruce frowns. “What’s on Vanaheim?”

“Diamonds,” Tony offers. “Real fact. Vanaheim has deep reserves of diamonds. That’s what makes their economy one of the strongest in the Nine Galaxies, despite the fact that diamonds have never had any real sort of resale value. The Vanir make a killing off of the multi-trillion double dollar wedding industry.”

“Okay,” Bruce says, nodding, as though Tony has answered his question thoroughly and not tangentially, with no relevance whatsoever. Then he turns to Steve. “What, _other_ than diamonds and weddings, is on Vanaheim?”

Steve pauses. Loki watches him with something bordering on amusement.

“The Winter Soldier,” he says finally.

The room, which had been shifting with rustling and background noises, stills immediately. The faces of his crewmates stare at him, unblinking. For once, no one has anything to say.

It’s Tony who speaks first, but he’s serious this time.

“The Winter Soldier. The story we’ve been chasing for nearly a year now. You found him?”

“Loki did, actually,” Steve says. He nods his head toward Loki, feeling strangely uncomfortable as he does so. “His intelligence checks out. Natasha ran the evidence and it seems real. And it gives us a target.”

“Yes,” Tony says slowly. “An entire planet. What are we supposed to do, scan the surface until a homicidal assassin appears on our radars?”

“You let me worry about that,” Natasha says.

“What am I supposed to worry about then?”

“We need new toys.”

This gets Tony’s attention. He turns to her with intrigue.

“Talk dirty to me.”

“We don’t know who the Winter Soldier is or what he’s equipped with,” she says. “We have to assume the worst. We have to assume he shoots lasers from his eyes, eats bullets for breakfast, and is resistant to Planck-level phaser burns. If we’re going to stand a chance, we can’t go in underarmed. We need new toys.”

“Ohhh. It’s always Tony Don’t Mess With Artificial Intelligence until you need something from me.” His eyes are dancing with excitement.

“No artificial intelligence,” Steve says immediately, emphatically. “We don’t want a repeat of last year.”

Everyone winces as they remember Tony’s horribly misguided attempt to create and tame a being that ran on artificial intelligence. The robot had come to life in the most spectacularly homicidal way possible and tried to kill nearly everyone on the ship until Thor had smashed its head in with his hammer.

“So there are some kinks to work out,” Tony says. “Rome wasn’t built in a day.”

“Rome didn’t run the threat of being overthrown by robots running on AI,” Sam mutters.

“Our phasers alone may not be enough,” Steve says, ignoring both of them. “We don’t know what that metal arm does. Natasha will try to knock it offline if possible, but we just don’t know enough about its capabilities. We need more than standard-issued phasers and shields.”

“Are you asking me what I think you’re asking me?” Tony’s face broadens into the most terrifying grin anyone on the ship has ever seen. It occurs to Steve only too often how much like a mad scientist Tony appears given half the opportunity. Briefly, Steve considers whether everyone on board is inclined to be a psychopath.

“Don’t make me regret it,” Steve says.

“Full reigns,” Tony says. “Complete freedom?”

“Upgrade us, Stark,” Steve says.

“God,” Tony’s eyes glitter with poorly concealed delight. “It would be my utter and distinct pleasure.”

  
  
The plan comes together slowly after that, the next five days passing in a dim blur of strategy meetings and Natasha’s spiders crawling back with just enough information to make the risk worth it.

“There’s a summit,” Natasha says the next day. “Dignitaries from the outer branch planets are on Vanaheim for three days discussing a trade agreement that would establish them as a bloc.”

They’re in the Strategy Bay, like they have been for the past two days. He’s barely gotten a few hours of sleep, he’s already buzzing with the need to be on the ground, a phaser and his shield in hand. Steve is good at strategy, a natural-born leader with a voice that commands. But what he loves is being on the field, executing the plan, not staring at holos bleary-eyed after his fifth shot of espresso in three hours.

“You think someone wants to disrupt that,” Steve says.

“Seems like a good place to unleash the Winter Soldier,” is all Natasha says.

“Where’s the summit?” Steve asks. There’s a map of Vanaheim cast up on the wall opposite him. Half of the planet is deserted. The half that is densely inhabited forms its cities around deep rivers and, as Tony mentioned, diamond mines.

“Capital city. Njörðr,” Natasha says. “The main event is a forum being held in the Capitol building. There are events leading up to it.”

“When is it?”

Natasha’s lips quirk at the corner.

“In three days.”

“Someone up there loves us,” Sam says, shaking his head in disbelief. "Can't imagine why."

 _  
The Avenger_ buzzes with activity, a barely contained energy, like a village gearing up for war. Steve isn’t the only one in the Gym Bay anymore. Thor joins him and spars with him, as does Sam, and Natasha, while Clint uses the target shooting equipment to flex his aim. The Mechanical Bay is a constant hum of noise and terrible metal music. At odd hours, Steve hears Tony lifting weights and muttering in strings of math to himself. Even Loki parses through pages upon pages of intelligence, although Steve catches him, more than once, staring at the holo of a golden tree.

  
They dock in Vanaheim precisely on time, down to the minute, a miraculous act from a god who, presumably, does not want Steve Rogers to jeopardize their mission by getting arrested for assaulting Border Control. By the time they gather their supplies to disembark, they have the details in their heads, a route to run that puts exactly the right person at exactly the place at exactly the right time. Tony mysteriously presses a different piece of small equipment into each of their hands with no real explanation. It’s with a sense of purpose and questionable technology that the Howling Commandos separate at the port.  

Unsurprisingly, Natasha doesn’t have a hard time convincing the Vanaheim Guard that she’s been assigned as body detail to guard the King. Any protests die the moment she disarms the man foolish enough to complain with one swift move, sweeping the phaser out of his hand and turned to his chest, her forearm crushing his throat as he’s slammed against the wall. The slinky green dress clings to all of the right places, her bright red hair swept up and to one side over her shoulder. Not a single strand comes untucked when she finally releases the pressure on his neck.

There are diamonds at her ears and throat and knives strapped to her thighs. There’s a large glittering ring she wears on her right hand, courtesy of Tony Stark. She smiles calmly at the rest of the Guard, who part like the Red Seas for her until their Captain offers her an arm and to lead her to the King.

“His hand goes an inch lower and I shoot,” Clint mutters into the com. He’s perched on the rooftop across the street, arrows strapped to his back, his bow resting lazily in one hand. From his vantage point, he can see clearly into the Grand Hall of the Vanir Palace, where the dignitaries for the summit are arriving for the ball hosted in their honor.

“Don’t think you’ll have the chance before she stabs him,” Sam says in reply. He’s dressed in a suit and sunglasses, com to his ear, blending in perfectly with the Guards standing near the entrance to check guests for weapons and gate crashers. Sam’s expression is stony as he takes a small metal ball into his palm, pressing the button set into one side. The short, green man with the twisted blue beard in front of him glares at him as he’s enveloped in a golden dome that scans him for illegal contraband. His name, rank, and background information pops up in a one foot by one foot holographic square in the corner.

“Have a good time, sir,” Sam mutters at the unhappy foreigner. There’s a member of the Vanaheim Guard knocked out and tied up in a coat room somewhere in the Palace, wearing Sam’s castoff clothes. On Sam, there’s a small, circular silver button pinned to the underside of his white dress shirt collar. Every ten seconds it pulses.

“Gotta say, Sam. You’re looking a little paler than usual,” Steve comments.

“Looking forward to my ten minutes of white privilege, Cap,” Sam mutters back. There’s a quarter of a second lag every five minutes in Tony’s Reality Alteration Device. The ten second pulses keep the knocked out guard’s features masking Sam’s own, but for anyone paying close attention to the quarter of a second, the reality shifts infinitesimally and Sam’s features briefly appear. Think of blinking and he’s gone.

“Rooftops are clear, Cap,” Clint says, casting a critical eye at the buildings to the right and left of the one he’s perched on.

“No one suspicious on the ground,” Sam says at the entrance.

“Ah, Thor!” a voice comes indistinctly over the line. “Does your father know you’re so far from Asgard?”

Thor’s booming chuckle can be heard over the coms. Inside, he’s mixed in a small group of ambassadors. The president of the Republic of Alfheim extends a hand to the Asgardian prince, who is dressed in a finely tailored black suit and has his golden hair tied back into a ponytail. There’s a small hammer cufflink on his right wrist that grows hot or cold depending on the threat level assessed. Right now it rests cold against the outside of Thor’s suit jacket sleeve.

“President, what my father doesn’t know won’t hurt him,” Thor’s voice says. Almost everyone can mentally see him winking, taking the President’s hand in his own, his other hand on the other man’s forearm in the Asgardian custom.

“His waste of a son spread rumors of Thor’s sexual proclivities for years when they were at Alpha Omicron together,” Loki’s voice comes over the coms. He sounds irritated, which is both normal and unusual for Loki, who oscillates wildly between being impassive about everything and irritated about everything else.

“What kinds of rumors?” Tony asks, intrigued.

“That he preferred to lie with men and had unnatural feelings toward his brother.”

“But...both of those things are true,” Tony points out after a pause.

“I did not say he lied,” Loki answers dryly.

“Steve, the King is going to make his entrance in five minutes,” Natasha’s voice interrupts. “You have a two minute window to find this guy if he exists.”

“How sure are your spiders that the King is his target?” Steve asks her again, for the tenth time.

“Positive.”

“You guys are sure that the King’s gonna feel like giving us immunity for kidnapping him?” Sam mutters. He scans an alien dignitary with six eyes and claws for hands through the entrance, shuddering as he does so.

“Once he figures out we’ve actually saved his life?” Tony replies. “50/50.”

“Better hope Loki’s reflexes are faster here than they were on Asgard,” Clint says.

“I got us out of the mess my fool of a brother got us into, didn’t I?” Loki sounds irritated again.

“Everyone shut up and pay attention to your marks,” Steve says in exasperation.

Steve is watching the scene unfold from his own vantage point. His building is tucked in between the Palace and the last building on Clint’s left. Where Clint’s building is tall enough to rival the spires of the Palace, Steve’s is barely taller than a standard storefront, putting him somewhere between the sky and Sam’s eyesight on the ground. The triaging of sight was Clint’s idea.

On board the ship, Loki and Tony run separate scanners. Tony has the body heat scanner running simultaneous to a visual scanner, scouring the area for figures with hidden agendas and bodies with unusual heat signatures. At his console, Loki is scanning through the Underground and his own sources gathering intelligence that appears in live time.

“Everything is dreadfully dull up here, Cap,” Tony says. So far, every heat signature has registered at normal levels. Either figures are entirely hot or entirely cold, depending on what their genetic make up is and what planet they come from.

“The Underground is similarly reporting no new activity,” Loki mutters. “But we are within the window.”

“Escorting the King in now,” Natasha’s voice ripples over the set. She adjusts her hair and the knives in her thigh holster. She smiles at the King, an old man with long, white hair that’s been swept back across his forehead and tied at the back into a ponytail. He has a lovely woman in shimmering gold on his arm. At first glance, she looks young enough to be his daughter, but she has crow’s feet near the edges of her eyes and her eyes themselves seem weary and sad.

The din in the Grand Hall dims as trumpetfare rings out to introduce the entrance of the King. The crowd looks toward the entranceway where the King and his guards are to step in. Near the middle of the room, Thor’s eyes scan the rest of the room for any movement while everyone is distracted. For a minute, the world slows to a single, pealing note of trumpet.

The King and Queen come in together, glittering and smiling with elegance and the confidence of the rich and powerful. Any danger that they might be in seems to go unheeded, their trusts and lives put into the capable hands of their six man-and-woman VanGuard. Each guardsman is built differently and wearing the same black uniform. Their weapons are very prominently displayed to leave no question in anyone’s mind about the consequences of offering a threat to their lieges.

Two rows behind the King and Queen is Natasha and her escort, the Captain of the VanGuard, a tall man with brown hair and tortoiseshell eyeglasses. They are meant to look like partygoers, special guests of the King and Queen, much like the princes and their wives following directly behind. The party is to show the room the power and number of the Royal family, but it is also to intersperse secret agents that are not so obvious. What seems like a six man-and-woman Guard is actually a twelve-person regiment. Natasha catches Thor’s eyes and gives her head a small shake. Thor scans the balconies and finds no one out of the ordinary.

“Ladies and Gentlemen,” the soothing, accented voice of an older gentleman calls out through an invisible sound system. The words are scrambled and translated in the Babylon earpieces of each guest who does not speak English, the official language of the Interplanetary Governing System. “Please stand attention for His and Her Majesties, the King and Queen of Vanaheim.”

The audience breaks into polite applause.  

The King and Queen stop at the top of the stairs, nodding and allowing the audience to applaud for a little while longer. They take a step down, their party following at their backs. The trumpetfare ends and the sounds of a string orchestra swell around the room. When the King and Queen reach the bottom of the stairs, the President of Alfheim steps forward first, a cordial smile on his face.

"Your majesties," he says loudly.

Behind him, his own party of three advisors stands at attention. To the side, there are three or four other dignitaries invited specifically for this summit by the King himself.  
  
"President," the King says, voice deep, face kind.  
  
The President reaches a hand forward to shake the King’s hand and there’s a beat. The King takes the President’s hand and they shake. For a single, solitary, hushed beat.  

Then the President lets out a grunt and crumples to the ground.

  
“No!” comes Thor’s shout across the room, just as everyone takes a shocked heartbeat to process what’s happened--and chaos breaks loose.

“ _Loki!_ ” Steve shouts into his com. He can hear the frantic beeping of the keyboard on Loki’s end of the line as the Jotun shuts down the teleporters in and within a 50 mile radius of the Palace.

The crowd starts screaming and the VanGuard moves swiftly into place around the King and Queen. One of the guards moves to grab the King and Natasha’s arm is out in a flash, closing around the guard’s throat. She forces him back and they stumble together, grunting and fighting for dominance. The guard elbows her in her stomach and it’s only because she trips over the edge of her dress that he’s able to make contact and break out of her grasp. He escapes to the right, jumping over the railing and into the crowd of hysterical guests.

“Shit!” Natasha mutters. “ _Thor_ , the King and Queen.”

She’s reaching for the phaser tucked in under her dress when someone grabs her by her throat and slams her into the railing. She hisses out in pain, the wood of the balustrade digging painfully into her back. She blinks from surprise as her escort presses his own phaser into her sternum.

“I’m _helping_ ,” Natasha grunts at the Captain, struggling for breath. “Let me _go_.”

“No,” comes the glare behind tortoiseshell glasses. “You are not.”

It takes a beat longer than it should have for Natasha to understand what’s happened.

“Who are you?” she glares at him. Her left hand is left unchecked and she reaches under the slit of her dress for her knives.

The Captain leers at her, bright white teeth and all.

“ _Hail HYDRA_ ,” he says just as Natasha throws herself at him with full force, knife in hand.

She slashes at his arm viciously and it’s only because he loses balance as he stumbles backwards that the phaser shot grazes her thigh instead of going clean through her ribs. The burning is unbearable, but she doesn’t have time to pay attention. She grits her teeth, sinking her knife into his side. He roars in pain, shoots another round off that catches her right shoulder, before he topples over the railing.

“ _Fuck_ ,” she hisses in pain, clutching her shoulder. “ _Thor!”_

Thor, in the meantime, has his hammer in hand, one of his small cufflinks mysteriously missing from his jacket cuff. He’s fighting through the panicking crowd, which is trying to push past and around him, attempting to get to the exits. Even his breadth doesn’t help him too much, so he uses the electric pulse of his hammer to knock a small crowd around him unconscious. He lets out a bellow as he pushes through the now parting sea of people to get to the King and Queen. There’s a red laser dot at the King’s breast.

The field of vision narrows for the Asgardian Prince, blood pounding in his ears, and he throws himself in front of the King and Queen just as the concentrated phaser shots burst through the windows, shattering them and blasting shards of glass into the Grand Hall. The laser shot eats through the shoulder of Thor’s suit, but bounces off of the armor he’s wearing underneath. The heat burns at his skin under the cool metal, but that is the worst of it as he rolls the King and Queen to the side.

Two guards quickly descend upon him before Thor has the chance to grab his hammer again, but Natasha is there within seconds, her heels sweeping the legs out from under one of the HYDRA agents and a knife going into the throat of the other. The two agents topple out of the way and Thor pulses his hammer again, knocking three guests out of the way so that he can scoop up the King and Queen.

“Nat, Thor, get the King and Queen to safety and secure the ground,” Steve’s voice shouts into the coms. “Sam!”

“Little busy here, Cap,” Sam pants out. He’s at the front entrance, two other HYDRA agents knocked out at his feet and one currently pinning him to the stone of the palace.

“Jesus Christ, how many are there?” Natasha says into her com, out of breath. Most of the VanGuard have since dissipated into the crowd, those who weren’t HYDRA agents gathering around the fallen body of the President or giving Thor instructions on secret passageways. She turns around and there’s a woman with blond hair and a grim smile pointing a gun at her. “Oh Jesus fuck. Hold on, guys.”   

It takes all of Steve’s energy not to leap off his roof and join the action on the ground, but they aren’t here only as security detail for the King and Queen. He scours the rooftops around him, searching for where that lethal shot came from.

“No unusual heat signatures,” Tony says in frustration. “The bastard must be hiding the arm’s signature somehow. Cap, anything?”

“It’s just me and Clint up here,” Steve grinds out.

“ _Clint_ ,” Natasha’s plea comes from the ground. Her voice sounds more strained than usual.

“Hold on,” Clint says. He fits an arrow into his bow and angles it in through the gaping hole where there used to be reinforced palace windows. His aim is as steady as his voice is. Inside the Grand Hall, Natasha ducks and Clint’s arrow explodes in the blonde’s face, burning through the skin and knocking her backwards.

“Captain,” Thor’s voice comes, suddenly. Steve freezes, turning his sight toward the tower to the right of the Grand Hall. There, on the parapet, Thor stands clearly visible, with a hand on the King’s arm. The King is shaking like a leaf in the wind, but whatever Thor whispers to him must reassure him, because he does not try to escape. The Queen is nowhere in sight.

“Bait is out,” Steve mutters into his com. “Nat, Sam, can you hold the ground?”

“Not like anyone’s been helping so far,” Sam pants out. The pile of HYDRA agents at the entrance has now grown to five. Sam’s managed to convince the non-HYDRA guards to help him pull the doors closed. On the other side, there are screams and scrabbles from guests trying to escape, but the doors hold fast. The safest place for everyone right now is inside the palace.

“Thor,” Steve says.

“He will not be harmed, Captain,” Thor says. His grip tightens on the King’s arm.

The tableau stands still for a moment, the Howling Commandos spread out across the scene, holding their positions. The wind whips through cruelly and the arrow Clint has fit into his bow quivers slightly. Inside the palace, the crowd still roils and screams. Natasha and Sam hold their ground.

Steve can feel his own breathing in his ribs, a tense, resounding moment.

Then--

“It’s him,” Clint says.

 _It’s him_ , Clint says, and Steve feels the words echo through his skull. A man who is unfindable and they have flushed him out.

  
“To my right,” Clint says. “Clear shot to Thor and the King.”

Steve traces Clint’s line of vision to the building in question, clean across from the tower and parapet. A man stands there, more shadow than ghost. He’s dressed in black, but there’s a silver that gleams where his arm should be. He has a black mask covering his mouth and a modified sniper rifle resting on the lip of the roof, aimed exactly where it should be aimed.

“Sam,” Steve says, taking a step back from the edge. “Clint.”

“No room for error,” Sam says. “I know.”

“Target locked,” Clint says.

A phaser shot blasts the top edge of the parapet just as Thor shoves the King to the right. He pulls out his hammer and the second shot bounces off the shallow golden force shield that shimmers in front of him. He sends back a shot of electricity and it collides with another phaser shot between the two roofs with a loud crack, both disintegrating into thin air. Another shot rings out and this time, it shatters through Thor’s shield. He curses and stumbles backward.

On the ground, Sam tears off his suit jacket and throws his sunglasses to the side. He passes a thumb over his wrist and his wings unfold from behind him. He takes a two second running start and then his feet lift off the ground. Steve takes a few steps back then runs forward, flinging himself off the roof. He drops steeply, but Sam is there immediately, wings rocketing the two of them up as Steve clings to Sam’s waist. An explosion ricochets to the rooftop right of where Clint is and Sam and Steve barrel above Clint, twisting through the air. Sam hits the roof hard, running as his wings fold in, and Steve rolls off of him and to his feet, his shield in his hand just in time to protect himself from the phaser blast.

He forces himself to his feet, pulling his shield up as another blast ricochets off of it. The blast is more forceful this time, closer in range, and Steve has to grit his teeth to hold his ground. He looks past the shield and the Winter Soldier is facing him. The skin around his eyes are darkened with some kind of coloring, but it can’t mask how furious the bright blue pupils are. He aims the phaser rifle at Steve again before Steve can gain any kind of ground, but Sam’s wings are unfolded again. He flies forward toward the Winter Soldier, the watch on his wrist aimed to fire particle discs. The Soldier growls as Sam collides into him, both of them rolling together off their feet. The Winter Soldier loses his rifle with a growl, but reaches forward with his metal arm instead, fist colliding with a crunch into Sam’s shoulder.

Sam shouts in pain as Steve shouts “ _Sam!_ ”

Steve hurtles himself forward, shield up, but not before the other man has ripped one of Sam’s wings off and taken him by the throat, holding him up. Sam is struggling, his kicks connecting with the other man’s ribs, but the Winter Soldier barely seems to notice. His metal plates shift and click together and his fingers tighten dangerously around Sam’s throat. Sam’s voice gets choked off and Steve fires a phaser round off at the metal arm. It bounces off the elbow and the Winter Soldier turns to look at Steve. His eyes are smoldering with hatred and he throws Sam with all the strength he has to the ground. Sam lands with a loud thud, his body rolling with the force of the impact.

Steve crushes his shield into that metal arm as he forces the Winter Soldier back from his position. The other man uses his flesh hand to grab Steve’s wrist and try to turn the phaser on himself. Steve hisses in pain. The other man’s grip is almost crushing. Whatever he is--myth or fairytale--he’s a monstrous one. But Steve Rogers doesn’t live in the gym for no reason. He shouts with effort and twists his hand back while pressuring the other man off with his shield. He fires a shot of the phaser, which burns past the other man’s hip, making him grunt and momentarily fall back.

They stand a few inches apart, panting from the effort, but not for long. Steve puts his shield up just as the metal arm comes crashing down on the vibranium. The resulting sound echoes throughout the rooftops, accompanied only a second later by an explosion to the left of the Winter Soldier as Clint sets off another exploding arrow. Steve bends backwards and the Winter Soldier uses the space to grab a knife from one of the belts covering his black vest. He tries to work around the shield to stab him and another arrow explodes to his right.

The man with the metal arm growls in frustration and crashes his hand down to the side of Steve’s shield with enough force and at just the right angle and trajectory for it to be knocked out of Steve’s hand.

“Fuck!” Steve pants out as the Winter Soldier swings a knife at him. He stumbles backwards, hand attempting to grasp for his shield, but the other man’s combat boot connects with the shield and sends it scattering away. Steve gets another shot of the phaser in before a swipe sends him sprawling backwards. Luckily for him, the Winter Soldier takes this particular distraction to grab his own standard phaser and shoot off a few rounds toward Clint, who keeps sending arrows that are making him roar with displeasure. One of the shots must make some sort of contact, because Steve hears Clint grunt and the volley of arrows stops.

Steve scrambles to his feet as the Winter Soldier turns his attention back to him, his hands closing around the only weapon left to him. That’s when he sees where his last phaser shot went: just off-center from the other man’s mouth. The strap of his mask is damaged, so the Soldier grabs it and tears it off.

  
The face that emerges makes the world stop for Steve Rogers, for one, very long minute.


	5. Training Camp, 12 Years Ago

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As promised, part 2 of the chapter I split. I hope you enjoy this slightly emotional break from your usually scheduled sci fi plot.

**_12 years ago._ **

  
The first month of training under the command of Nicholas J. Fury is every bit as miserable as Steve imagined it would be. Despite the fact that he recruited him personally, Fury is no kinder to Steve than he is to the cane he occasionally and begrudgingly uses when his old war injury acts up. In fact, he often uses this same cane to rap Steve sharply at the back of his knees when he’s not going through drills fast enough, which causes Steve to fall over himself into the mud. Despite the fact that the Training Grounds are artificial terrain, with the programmer deciding on what planet and in what climate the recruits are training in on any given day, the mud and winds and, often, sandstorms certainly feel real to the trainees. Steve spits out more than one mouthful of mud where, after the simulation has been turned off, there is nothing at all.

If the first month is an intensive sort of boot camp, aiming to instill some measure of discipline into Fury’s hapless recruits, the second month is a boot camp of boot camp. Steve has never felt so tired or useless in his life. Any sort of tactical training they are to receive is still months away and his 95 lb bird frame is on the edge of breaking. He’s still managed to get into three fights that Fury himself has personally thrown him out of. It’s the third of these fights that finally makes Fury snap.

“Get your goddamn self together, Rogers,” he growls menacingly, fingers digging into Steve’s aching shoulder painfully. “If I have to throw you out of training one more time, you can take your sorry ass out of my regiment and face the jail time I so _kindly_ got you out of.”

Fury sends Steve to the Disciplinary Tent, where there are different quadrants for different trainees, depending on how serious their infraction was and what their commander demanded as punishment. Fury’s punishment for Steve is doing laps, which is only a punishment because Fury knows how much Steve hates his short strides. He has to run three times as hard as anyone else and his lungs always seize up after the first mile and by the second he’s always nearly in anguish and on the edge of an asthma attack. Steve thinks the only way Fury gets away with it not being classified as torture is because there’s always a medic around to shoot anti-asthma medication into Steve’s arm once he starts convulsing.

He’s begrudgingly past his first mile and painstakingly wheezing through his second when someone joins him. Steve is barely staying upright at this point, his limbs and lungs ache so much. He doesn’t have the time or energy to bother with this other person. Anyway, he’s still pissed at stupid James Montgomery Falsworth, who is every bit the douchebag as his full name--which he  _insists_ on going by--makes him sound. Falsworth had apparently been taking bets on how long the “five foot nothing inches runt” would last, but hadn’t been smart enough to not take those bets within the hearing distance of the “five foot nothing inches runt.” Long story short, Steve’s temper had gotten the better of him and he’d come away from the scuffle with Fury’s ire and a busted lip.

He’s wheezing a little past his mile and a half mark when the other trainee catches up to him. Even though the other douchebag is in perfect shape, he keeps the slow, struggling pace that Steve is keeping. He doesn’t say anything until Steve finally ends up stumbling over his exhausted legs. It’s only then that the other trainee reaches out and grabs his elbow.

“Hey,” he says. “Slow down, you’re gonna kill yourself at this rate.”

Steve stumbles to a stop and he has to take a moment to catch his breath, hand clutching his side.

"I'm fine," he manages to wheeze out, defensive even as his lungs are collapsing in on themselves.

“You’re crazy, you know that?” the other boy says. It’s only at this that Steve frowns and looks up at him, ready to ask him who he thinks he is.

It strikes him like lightning, the recognition. The bright blue eyes, that same stupid swoop of hair.

" _You_!” Steve chokes out. His fists immediately curl into angry balls. “You’re the jerk who put me in here.”

The other trainee looks annoyed.

“Me? You started shouting at me in the street then took a swing at me.” He glares at Steve, a frown tugging at his lips. “ _You’re_ the reason _I’m_ in here.”

“What, your Ma and Pa couldn’t pay your bail?” Steve sneers. The jerk is taller than him, obviously, so he’s nearly standing up on his toes to make himself appear as physically threatening as he can. The other boy doesn’t have the good grace to look intimidated. He just looks more annoyed.

“Do you always talk before you think or is that just for me?”

“People like you always think you can get away with whatever you want,” Steve says through gritted teeth. He’s barely restraining himself and only doing so because he knows the surveillance cameras are functional and Nick Fury _will_ look through every minute of his run. He keeps reminding himself he _can’t_ get kicked out of S.H.I.E.L.D. for such a stupid reason, as though that has ever stopped him from doing something stupid before.

“You keep saying people like you like I’m supposed to know what that means,” the other boy says. He crosses his arms impassively and looks forward, squinting a bit and reads the badge sewn onto the front of Steve’s uniform. “Rogers. What’s your damage? You gotta crush on me or something?”

“You wish. I’ve known a lotta rich jerks like you,” Steve stands up straighter, glaring at the other trainee’s uniform. “Barnes. I don’t like the way you talk to people and I don’t like the way you treat people.”

“Did I black out and we’re suddenly friends?” Barnes says, a little incredulously. “You don’t even know me, how the hell do you think you know how I treat other people?”

“I heard you on the phone,” Steve says. He steps into Bucky’s space and momentarily loses his mind. He shoves him on his chest, hard. “You were being disrespectful about the gal you took out.”

Barnes stumbles backwards with a frown. He has the nerve to look even more bewildered and annoyed than he already did, as though it’s Steve and not him who’s the real asshole here.

“What _gal_?” Barnes says. He shoves Steve back. “I was talking to my _sister_.”

Steve stumbles backwards, hands balled into fists, ready to take a swing at this arrogant douchebag again.

“What does _that_ matter? You’re supposed to get a free pass because you were ragging on a girl to another girl?” Steve pushes Barnes again. “You think it doesn’t count just ‘cause you got one of their seals of approval?”

“I was ragging on _my sister_ , _to my sister_ , you actual arrogant, presumptuous _prick_ ,” Barnes says. He shoves Steve back and this time, before Steve can process what he’s said, Steve goes down, hard. He can’t help the grunt of pain that escapes him as he lands on his ass, his muscles contracting in pain along with the aches of the rest of his body.

Barnes, strangely, looks stricken.

“Shit,” he says. “I’m sorry man, here--”

He extends his hand to help pull Steve up. That’s his mistake. That’s when Steve lunges for him.

  
Long story short, Steve Rogers miraculously does not get kicked out of S.H.I.E.L.D., but Nick Fury does put him on grunt duty for the next two months. Much to his displeasure, it seems Barnes receives the same punishment from his commander.

Because they’re both new trainees and both being punished for being unable to control their tempers for the five minutes required to finish their previous punishments, it seems a rather elaborate joke on part of the universe, or perfectly fitting, that their duties force them into the same room more often than they don’t.

Steve’s training schedule has him waking up at 6:30 am and running physical drills until lunch time and then simulations until five or six in the evening. This means that he’s in the Kitchen Tent well before breakfast, by 4:30 am, to prepare the food and wipe down the Tent in begrudging silence with Barnes, and back in the Kitchen after dinner to do dishes and clean up after the hordes of disgusting trainees who, it seems to Steve, throw as much food on the tables and ground as they eat. Sometimes, in the brief hours on the weekend, which used to be dedicated to sleep and a two second respite from basic training, Steve and Barnes are assigned to desk duty, which is almost work. Steve comes away from every six hour desk shift with a hand full of papercuts, an aching back, and a pressure headache.

“We’re living in the _future_ ,” Steve complained to Fury about the nature of their work once. “Remind me again why the robots aren’t doing this.”

“Because the robots didn’t earn my ire,” Fury had one-eye-glowered at Steve. “They don’t need to learn character and you have all the discipline of a two year old Frost Giant throwing a temper tantrum. So shut the fuck up and do your damned work before I make you run a lap for every goddamn time you've irritated me.”

Steve had almost argued back before realizing he’d probably be running until his limbs came apart. The bare minimum he could do for self-preservation was keep his stupid mouth shut this time. Still, it was a close call.  
  
  
Steve and Barnes ignore each other for the first two weeks of their duties together. They wash dishes in stony and passive aggressive silence, Steve splashing water aggressively onto the plates that Barnes hands him, getting water and suds both on himself and Barnes. In retaliation, Barnes cuts onions aggressively in Steve’s direction when they’re preparing the meals because by the end of the third day he had realized how sensitive Steve’s eyes were to fumes. Steve hides the mop when it’s Barnes’s turn to wipe down the Dining Tent after evening meal and Barnes replaces Steve’s small-sized apron with an apron so large that it has to fold around Steve six times before it stays on his body. Their pointedly petty and desperate acts of building hatred escalate with a speed and ferocity that leaves the other trainees around them mystified.

“He’s really not that bad,” Morita tries to tell Steve one day over a breakfast of fresh fruits and porridge that had taken Steve twice as long as usual to make because Barnes kept putting the ingredients out of his reach. His wide-eyed, surprised-faced bullshit had lasted only long enough for Steve to shove him against the counter and it was only because a bowl had crashed to the ground and their eyes had flickered up to the camera watching them in panic that they hadn’t end up in yet another brawl.

“A three eyed flying cockroach with pincers isn’t that bad either,” Steve mutters, stuffing his mouth with peach slices. “When it’s dead.”

“Are you threatening to kill him?” Morita asks, raising an eyebrow in concern that doesn’t quite make it past the twitch at the edge of his lips.

“No,” Steve says sweetly. “But if a fork makes its way in between his stupid eyes I won’t cry over it at night.”

Morita shakes his head as though he knows things Steve could not possibly begin to understand, although Steve thinks the only thing Morita knows that Steve doesn’t is Japanese.

  
The hatred becomes an irrepressible, irrational thing. It fills the pit of Steve’s stomach every time he sees Barnes’s stupid, smug face with the stupid swoop in his hair. He clenches his jaw so hard and so often that he starts getting migraines at night while his eye develops a twitch during the day from barely repressed anger and irritation.  

In the Dining Tent, their civility remains barely intact for the sake of the commanders and superiors watching them, and in the Kitchen Tent, civility is the dream of a myth. They don’t talk to one another and when they do, it’s vicious and terrible. When they make physical contact, someone always ends up hurt.

  
“Has he actually _done_ anything awful to you?” Gabe Jones asks during their morning drills. They’re doing high knees through a mud simulation and Steve keeps slipping and landing sprawled on knees that are barely healed from the last time they did this same simulation. The mud plasters his blond hair across his forehead and his cheeks are pink from frustration. His uniform, already too large on him despite being the smallest size offered, keeps slipping off his shoulders. He’s wet and cold and feels smaller and angrier than usual.

“Existed,” Steve spits out, venom and mud.

“So you’re angry because he was born to annoy you?” Gabe asks, not bothering to disguise how juvenile he thinks the both of them are being.

“I’m angry because he’s a rat bastard,” Steve says, although, upon further questioning, he can’t explain it any clearer than _I hate people like him_.

Gabe sighs with a roll of his eyes and extends a hand to Steve to help him to his feet.

“He probably hates people like you too,” he says, unimpressed. Steve wipes the mud from his eyes with a frown.

“People like what?” he asks.

“Exactly,” Gabe says and walks away.

  
The more his friends ask him about his inexplicable hatred toward Barnes, though, the clearer it becomes to Steve that there’s some measure of irrationality behind his feelings and actions. He can’t place what it is about Barnes that fills him with such a need to stab something or someone, but the next time he sees Barnes--that evening at the Kitchen Tent, after evening meal is over--he roughly elbows him with no provocation and it’s only when Barnes has him pinned against the pantry door in retaliatory anger that he thinks he must have lost his mind.

“I hate you,” Steve glares up at the other boy.

“Yeah, I’m your _biggest_ fan, buddy,” Barnes grinds out. His arm is across Steve’s chest and it hurts Steve because despite all of the training and improved nutrition, he’s still 95 pounds with bones that are liable to snap if they’re looked at sideways wrong.

Steve’s jaw works in anger and he can feel another migraine threatening to cloud his vision. He’s already been feeling a little under the weather from the cold and wet drill this morning. A migraine would knock him sideways and he can’t risk Fury sidelining him from training and pushing his graduation date back further. He shoves Barnes off of him with all the strength he can muster--which isn’t very much. Barnes lets him go anyway.

“We have three weeks left,” Steve says hotly. “Just stay out of my way and we never have to see each other ever again.”

“My fucking pleasure,” Barnes says and lets Steve go. He glares at Steve, but it’s without the pointed heat Steve manages every time he looks Barnes’s way. Instead, Barnes snaps his mouth shut and moves to the far end of the kitchen to do his half of the dishes, shoulders stooped a little lower than they usually are. He seems tired. Or maybe a little, inexplicably, sad.

  
What Steve doesn’t expect is for Barnes to not show up to the Kitchen the next day. He works both shifts alone and he doesn’t grind his jaw and he doesn’t get a migraine. It’s also twice the work and quieter than he expected it to be. He makes a mental note to rail at Barnes the next time he sees him for leaving him with all of the work.

He complains about it all through dinner that night and through breakfast the next morning. By the time they’re in the six hour simulation drill the next afternoon, Gabe Jones lets Steve get shot by a mock phaser on purpose just so Steve has to sit out from the team drill until this portion of the simulation has run its course. Gabe gets docked points, but he’s rewarded for his efforts when Steve takes off his helmet and has to stalk off the field toward the benches. On his way past Morita, the other man gives him a strangely knowing smirk. Steve scowls and stews in his own anger for the next four hours.

  
Barnes doesn’t show up that evening either, nor the next morning. When he finally returns to duty the following evening, Steve is ready to shout at him, his fists already balled up and the words at the tip of his tongue, but Barnes doesn’t so much as look at Steve. He comes in, does his work in silence, all signs of passive aggressiveness gone, and leaves without a word. Steve is perplexed, but Barnes doesn’t respond to any of his prodding.

This continues for a week.

  
The next Monday, Steve wakes up at 4 in the morning and stares at the star simulation above his bunk in their tent. Tonight there’s, mercifully, no rain. He hates it when it rains because even fake rain feels real in a simulation tent and instead of preparing himself to sleep outside in different terrains in the field, the rain simulations just make Steve sick. He thinks he can’t stand another day of silence in the Kitchen, even if they only have two weeks of duty left. Looking at Barnes makes his blood boil, but at least if they’re sniping at each other, Steve has a release for his pent up anger. Barnes’s newly adopted listlessness just makes Steve restless and uncomfortable.

By the time he’s in the Kitchen Tent that morning, he’s worked himself up. He’s early, like he always is, and he has his apron tied around his thin frame. As usual, he sighs aggressively as he ties the strings twice around himself. He hears the door behind him slide open, signalling that the other boy must have finally arrived. Steve’s head starts buzzing with irritation immediately, but he takes a deep breath. He turns around, jaws clenched, practiced speech ready.

“I don’t know _what_ your damage is, Barnes, but I’m sick of it,” he starts in immediately. “I’m not a fucking _leper_ \--”

Steve stops immediately, his jaw dropping.

Barnes avoids his eyes. An ugly purple bruise spreads across his jaw, accenting the black eye he’s sporting. Steve can see mottled skin at his neck, even though he’s tried to turn his collar up to hide it. Even his hair isn’t in its usual infuriating swoop.

“What the hell--”

“It’s nothing,” Barnes mutters. He takes off his jacket and hangs it on the hook next to the door.

“Barnes, you look--”

“I _said_ it’s nothing,” Barnes snaps. He rolls up his sleeves. He continues to avoid Steve’s eyes as Steve sees the cuts and bruises littering his arms.

Barnes tries to move past Steve to get to his apron, but Steve reaches out immediately, hand closing over the other boy’s forearm.

“Hey,” Steve breathes. “What the fuck happened?”

Barnes’s motions still, his hand still outstretched to his apron. He opens his mouth, licks his dry lips. Then he snaps it shut, fingers closing around the garment.

“You said to stay out of your way and I’m gonna,” Barnes says. “You stay out of my way too. We’re not friends. Don’t pretend we are.”

He shoves out of Steve’s grasp, puts on his apron, and goes to his corner of the kitchen as usual. He grabs a bag of potatoes and starts slicing them. Steve watches carefully and because he’s spent almost the entirety of the last two months in close quarters with the other boy, he doesn’t miss the way Barnes’s hand isn’t as steady as it should be.

Steve swallows his questions and lugs the cartons of eggs they’re going to need for breakfast. Once they’re all stacked by the metal counter, he grabs the heavy duty-sized metal bowl. He’s about to start the endless and thankless task of cracking eggs, when he sees Barnes cut himself. The other boy winces. The potatoes in front of him are poorly skinned and unevenly cut. Jesus.

Steve puts the eggs in his hands down and strides over to where Barnes is struggling. Barnes looks up at him with undisguised hostility, but Steve ignores him. Instead, he takes the knife from him and hip-checks Barnes out of the area.

“Go get yourself cleaned up,” Steve says. “You’re going to bleed all over the potatoes and give everyone food poisoning and then Fury’s gonna give _me_ grunt duty again for the next six months.”

Barnes opens his mouth to protest, but thinks better of it. He stands there for a moment longer, sucking on his bleeding finger. Then he nods.

“Thanks,” he says curtly before turning away to take care of his wound.

One of his wounds.

Steve doesn’t try to look at him for the rest of their morning duty, but he can’t erase from his mind what he’s already seen.

  
Steve thinks it’s just his face and hands, but Barnes has a hard time mopping after evening meal too. He’s moving the mop twice as slowly as usual and it’s only now that Steve can see the limp in his step. Steve slows his rag work on the tables to watch. Barnes winces as he pushes the mop and every time he has to lift the mop up to put it in the bucket, he breathes harder than he does before. Steve watches this for two minutes before he can’t take it anymore. He leaves the rag on the table and walks toward Barnes, hand on the handle of the mop within seconds. Barnes stiffens, his mouth opening angrily.

“Hey--”

“Shut up,” Steve says. “You can barely move, it’s gonna take you two hours to clean this one side of the room.”

“I don’t need your pity help,” Barnes snaps.

“Yeah, I don’t give a shit,” Steve says. He pulls the mop handle toward him, but Barnes doesn’t let go.

“Let _go_ ,” Barnes says, tugging the handle back toward him. “I’m _fine_.”

“You’re. Not. _Okay_ ,” Steve grits out, tugging the handle with more force than is strictly necessary. The mop rips out of Barnes’s hand and Steve scrambles to catch it, but it falls to the ground in a loud clatter.

Steve blinks at it and looks up at Barnes, expecting uncontrolled rage. Instead, to Steve’s shock, Barnes stares at the mop and looks like he’s going to cry.

“Hey,” Steve says softly. He puts a hand on Barnes’s shoulder uncertainly. “Are you okay?”

Barnes takes small, shallow breaths, the breaths of someone trying not to cry. Steve swallows. He’s not good at this, comforting others. He’s never had anyone to comfort before and it makes him panic for a second before he realizes that Barnes has gulped back whatever he’s feeling. The other boy shakes his head.

“It’s nothing,” he says and his voice sounds tired, but steady. “I just hurt more than usual.”

Steve pauses.

“Well yeah,” he says. “You don’t usually look like you were put through a meat grinder.”

“It’s no fork between my stupid eyes,” Barnes says wryly and Steve feels a jolt of pure guilt as he hears his own, unkind words echoed back to him. “But it’s not great.”

“Sorry,” Steve mutters. He gestures at Barnes. “What happened?”

Barnes’s face turns stony, his lips pressed thin.

“Nothing. Made some mistakes. Just gotta do better in training next time.”

Steve looks at him, eyes squinted.

“You got this during training?”

Barnes says nothing.

“Your Commander’s Pierce, right?”

Barnes makes a noncomittal noise.

Steve studies him a minute longer. The ugly purple bruise is darkening and some of the skin at his neck is turning yellow around the edges. His black eye looks like it really hurts and, in all honesty, is starting to swell so Barnes keeps having to squint out of that one when he looks straight ahead. His hands are still shaking. He honestly seems exhausted. Steve can barely carry a five pound bag of potatoes. He’s definitely not equipped to carry a full-sized human if he collapses.

“Go sit down, idiot. I’ll finish this room.”

Barnes shakes his head. “It’s my duty too.”

Steve sighs loudly, sounding as put-upon as he feels and looks.

“Just make it up to me later,” he says. “I haven’t caught pneumonia in a few months, so it’s approaching that time. You can have fun covering both shifts like I have.”

Steve bends and picks up the mop and Barnes doesn’t move, looking at him oddly.

“You get sick a lot?” he asks after a moment.

Steve shrugs. He shoves Barnes out of the way and starts mopping. Barnes stands around for another minute before finally moving toward one of the dining tables. He takes a seat with a wince and reaches for the rag Steve had left behind. He wipes down the table quietly as Steve mops. They’re both quiet for a while, but, for once, the silence isn’t hostile.

“You’re real little for the army,” Barnes says after a while.

Steve stills, his jaw clenching immediately. He puffs his chest out in defiance.

“So?”

“Relax,” Barnes rolls his eyes. “I’m just sayin’. You’re small and you get sick a lot. How’d you end up here?”

Steve gives him a pointed glare and Barnes rolls his eyes pointedly back.

“Ma died,” Steve says finally when Barnes doesn’t relent staring at him for an answer. “Didn’t have anyone else. Fury offered me a spot so I wouldn’t have to spend time in jail for our stupid fight.”

“Oh,” Barnes says. He frowns.

“What about you?” Steve says through gritted teeth. “How’d a rich boy like you end up here?”

Barnes rolls his eyes so hard this time they nearly fall out of his head.

“Can you fucking stop?” Barnes says. “I’m not a rich boy. I don’t know why you keep saying I am.”

“Your clothes? Shoes?” Steve says, as though it’s obvious. “Your hair? Everything about you?”

Barnes snorts.

“Those are my Sunday best, idiot. And I like my hair nice, so what? Not all of us enjoy looking like we’re constantly rolling out of a fight.”

“I do _not_ look like that,” Steve says, which only earns him an amused look from the other boy.

“I have two sisters,” Barnes says. “And a sick younger brother. Whatever money we have goes toward him. Midgard’s the only place that still doesn’t have Interplanetary Access Healthcare. We thought about moving sometimes, but we didn’t have the money. I worked two jobs. Ma felt bad for me so last Christmas she set aside enough money to buy me that suit and the shoes.”

“Oh,” Steve says this time. He looks up from where he’s mopping to study Bucky again. It’s possible that he misjudged the other boy. It’s possible that Steve Rogers had been a blind, presumptuous, prejudicial moron this entire time. He feels keenly guilty, especially now that Barnes looks like a technicolor, squashed eggplant.

“Yeah,” Barnes says, rolling a shoulder and sighing in pain. “It was stupid of me to lose my temper. I knew they couldn’t afford for me to lose my jobs. But S.H.I.E.L.D. threatened jail and Pierce said he’d offer me a spot in his regiment and well. I guess a military job ain’t so bad. We get a stipend eventually and I can send that back to them.”

Steve swallows and closes his eyes. He counts backwards from 10, the way his Ma taught him to when he was feeling miserable. He can almost hear his mother’s exasperated voice in his head. _For the love of God, Steve. You jump to conclusions so fast it’s like you’re wearing a jetpack strapped to your back._ _Take a second to listen, darling._ It’s possible that Barnes is actually a good guy and it was him, Steve, and not him, Barnes, who’s been the asshole in this situation the whole time.

“You’re annoying,” Steve declares instead.

Barnes raises an eyebrow and Steve aggressively manhandles his guilt by wiping the floor with more force than is necessary.

“You couldn’tve just let me continue hating you?” Steve asks, annoyed. “I was perfectly content thinking you were a jackass, Barnes.”

Barnes gives him another amused look and a one-shouldered shrug.

“Sorry,” he says. Then, “It’s Bucky.”

Steve stares at him.

“What’s a Bucky?”

“I am,” Barnes says, as though Steve is completely dense, which, well. “My name is Bucky. Not Barnes.”

“What kind of a--

“--name is Bucky?” Barnes--Bucky rolls his eyes. Steve makes him do that a lot, apparently. “Why is literally no one creative enough to ask a different question?”

“You can’t say something like your name is _Bucky_ and not expect me to ask about it,” Steve says.

“It’s my name,” Bucky says. “I don’t have to explain it to you.”

“It’s a ridiculous name,” Steve says.

“You’re a ridiculous person,” Bucky shoots back.

“I hate you,” Steve says.

“I hate _you_ ,” Bucky says.

The two boys glare at each other.

There’s no heat behind it this time.

When Steve eventually continues mopping, Bucky rolls his eyes for the fifteenth time. Steve’s lips twitch up at the corners.

  
Unsurprisingly, the next time they end up in the Kitchen together, their shoving and jostling isn’t nearly as filled with animosity as it was previously. Whatever tension there was before seemed to have broken overnight and Steve and Bucky regard each other tentatively at first and then with a strange sort of familiarity that neither of them can place. Steve hands Bucky the plates without getting water on any of them and Bucky helps Steve tie his apron when the ties won’t stay in place. They don’t talk much, but when they do, Steve says something that makes Bucky roll his eyes and Bucky says something that makes Steve reply sarcastically, in good humor. They get the morning meal cooked in half the time and by the time they’re ready to eat themselves, they find themselves inadvertently drifting to the same table in the Dining Tent. Force of habit, they think, blinking at each other. They catch themselves at the last moment and separate hastily before their friends can see.

Bucky sits down with the guys from his regiment and they all send a glare over at Steve.

Steve ignores them and mutters a hello to Gabe while smoothing back his unruly blond hair. There’s a little flour in it that he frowns at and tries to rub out.

Morita looks over at Steve with narrowed eyes, a potato triangle near his mouth.

“You seem different,” Morita accuses him.

Steve frowns at him and opens a carton of milk for his cereal.

“Don’t be stupid,” he declares.

Morita watches him throughout the morning meal. Steve makes it a point to not look toward Bucky’s table, but apparently this is the wrong thing to do.

“You’re awful quiet about Barnes this morning,” Gabe says through a mouthful of mushrooms and eggs.

“Ah,” Morita says in response. It’s only one syllable, but it says everything Morita means to say. He looks pleased with himself.

“What?” Steve frowns at him. “I don’t have anything to say I haven’t said before. He’s a rat bastard.”

Gabe raises an eyebrow. Morita nods once at Steve, gives him another Knowing Look, and returns to his breakfast.

Steve doesn’t know what that means, but he’s positive that it’s nothing good.

  
By the time their kitchen duty is finally nearing an end, Steve finds himself talking more to Bucky during their shifts than he doesn’t. Being an unapologetic morning person, Steve always comes into the Kitchen in the mornings bursting with news and strong opinions that Bucky will listen to quietly and not without a certain degree of amusement. They cut vegetables together and prepare eggs or oatmeal or any other form of bland, mass-produced sustenance together and Steve finds it hard to stop talking to Bucky and Bucky, for his part, apparently finds it hard not to laugh at Steve when he’s being thoroughly ridiculous. Bucky laughs a lot, in retrospect.

Steve will look back on this one day in a quiet sort of wonder and fondness, having lost his sense of endless chatter and unrepentant energy somewhere between the enhancers, active leadership roles, and heavy sense of responsibility for the sins of S.H.I.E.L.D. One day Steve Rogers will be quiet and lonely and long-suffering, but at that moment, for a brief period of time, he still has enough idealistic, reckless abandon to talk to Bucky Barnes with no point in sight.

  
Steve and Bucky still separate for their meals in the Dining Tent and Morita still continuously sends ill-disguised Knowing Looks toward Steve, but Steve quickly learns to ignore the suspicions of his friends. He never looks at Bucky’s table and  tucks away things he wants to discuss with Bucky for their evening shifts. Their shifts pass with concerning swiftness and Steve approaches their final few days of grunt work with a strange heaviness that he can’t quite place.

He and Bucky are wiping down the Kitchen after evening meal in almost tense silence when Bucky stops, his hand on the top of his mop. He frowns at Steve. Bucky’s hair is back to that infuriating swoop and the black eye has mostly faded by now. The angry purple bruise is less ugly and his neck is more or less human-colored at this point. He is frustratingly attractive for having been treated as a human kebab a few weeks ago, not even Steve can objectively deny it.

“What?” Steve stops putting away dry dishes to look up at Bucky self-consciously.

“You’re quiet,” Bucky says.

“So?”

“Are you sick?” Bucky asks. His tone is clearly mocking, but Steve is almost positive he hears a note of actual concern too. “Are you dying?”

It’s Steve’s turn to roll his eyes.

“You’re so dramatic,” Steve says. “I can be quiet.”

“Since when?”

“It’s been known to happen.”

“Uh huh. Seriously, are you dying?”

Steve sighs aggressively and dramatically at the other boy. All of the shelves are full of clean dishes and the only one left is the one up top that Steve is aggravatingly too short to reach. Still, he’s not about to ask Bucky for help. He tries to reach up, stretching his small body past its limit. He strains, but he’s still two inches too short to put the dishes away.

“Don’t be stupid, you’re gonna break all of them,” Bucky says and moves toward him at the same time Steve argues, “ _I’ve got it_.”

Bucky doesn’t listen to him. Bucky rarely listens to him. The other boy, who has a clear five to six inches on Steve already, takes the plates from Steve and tilts them up onto the shelf. Steve falls flat on his feet, angry and embarrassed, his face flushed. He hates this. Hates being small, hates being weak, hates being sick once a month. He’s always been told he has a big spirit and big personality, but the platitudes sound so fake to his ears that all he can ever hear are all the ways his body is deficient.

“Hey,” Bucky says, a frown tugging at his lips.

“I could’ve done it,” Steve says. His fists are balled and he’s having trouble breathing from embarrassment and anger.

“Hey, there’s no shame in asking for hel--”

“I _said_ I could’ve done it,” Steve snaps. He doesn’t look Bucky in the eyes. He’s glaring at the floor, at the space between their shoes. “Just because I’m small doesn’t mean--”

“Whoa, calm down, Stevie,” Bucky says, holding his hands up in the universal sign for _I’m not here to fight_. “I didn’t mean nothing by it. I know you could’ve done it. I just didn’t want you to hurt yourself.”

Steve doesn’t say anything. He’s still too busy glaring, his throat hot with hatred. Not for Bucky, but for himself. He stuffs his shoes with old newspapers and he still can’t reach the top of a stupid shelf. Old habits and insecurities die hard.

“Hey,” Bucky says again and his voice is softer, more cautious. He puts his index finger under Steve’s chin and tilts his face up so Steve has no choice but to look at him. “If you pulled something you probably woulda broken a bone or something because even your body is dramatic and ridiculous and then your graduation would be moved back another month at least and I know for a fact you’d blame me for it, somehow, and I’d never hear the end of it.”

Bucky’s attempt at reconciliation is so genuine and so stupid Steve can’t help but exhale his frustration and anger at his own body.

“Sorry,” he mutters, finally, when he’s calmed down enough to process the events like a normal person. “I just. I hate it.”

“Hate what?” Bucky asks.

“Me,” Steve admits, miserably, after a moment’s hesitation. He gestures at his body, at all 5 foot 4 inches of it, at the brittle bones, the weak lungs and heart, the poor circulation, and the muscle definition and weight gain that never comes in, no matter how much weight lifting he does or how much he runs or trains. “My body. All of it.”

“You’re perfect,” Bucky says, thoughtlessly.

A beat stretches between them and Steve blinks before finally looking up at Bucky. Bucky seems to realize what he’s said at exactly the same moment Steve processes it. The other boy flushes red and tries to backtrack.

“I just mean,” he say quickly, red-faced, “that there’s nothing wrong with you. You work just as hard as everyone else, probably harder, and everyone from your stupid regiment is always talkin’ about how you’re beating the scores despite the fact that you couldn’t throw a sack of potatoes so much as the sack of potatoes would throw you.”

Steve tries not to ogle at Bucky’s embarrassment. He tries for a slightly rueful and grateful smile instead. He conveniently ignores what feels like a strange, uncomfortable warmth spreading through his chest. If he wants to smile, it’s only because Bucky Barnes is so stupid. Distantly, he can see Morita’s smug face flash in the back of his mind. He hates Morita, on an unrelated note.

“You’re stupid,” Steve says with a reluctant grin.

Bucky rolls his eyes, his shoulders relaxing.

“You have flour in your hair,” Bucky says. “ _Again_.”

"What?" Steve blinks. 

Bucky reaches forward, again, without thinking. He takes a strip of Steve’s blond bangs between his index finger and thumb. He rolls the strands of hair between his fingers, rubbing the flour out. Steve doesn’t breathe for the whole ten seconds this happens. He’s acutely aware of how acutely aware he is of Bucky--of how close he’s standing, how he still smells like the rosemary and butter they used to make evening meal, how tall he is, how his hair is messy around the sides and swoops gracefully at the front even after hours of hard work. How his blue eyes are bright and amused and something else, something softer, that makes Steve squirm a bit inside. Steve’s body is rigid, tense. There’s something like electricity in his veins.

“Who’s stupid now?” Bucky says softly.

Steve thinks the answer _must_ be him, because he’s having difficulty breathing, let alone thinking. It’s possible he’s having a stroke.

It takes him almost another ten seconds of staring at Bucky, of watching the other boy with his hair in between his fingers, before Steve thinks to swat away Bucky’s hand with a nervous laugh.

“You are,” is all he says. Wit and sarcasm, his twin pillars of strength, abandon him at the very moment he needs them the most.

“Yeah,” Bucky says after a moment. He has a strange expression on his face. “Must be.”

\---

  
Steve thinks about that moment a lot, both after their kitchen duty ends and long, long after basic training is done. Some nights, still, Steve will lay awake thinking about that moment in time, when Bucky Barnes had his hand in Steve’s hair, lips pursed thoughtfully, bright blue eyes shining with emotion that Steve was still too stupid to understand.

Now, over a decade later, Steve will still lie awake some nights, remembering that moment in time and thinking how awful it is that he finally understands now, now that Bucky Barnes is long gone.


	6. The Winter Soldier

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope everyone had a lovely holiday! Once again, I've had to cut a chapter in half because someone (read: me) has a distinct inability to write in easily digestible quantities. I apologize in advance for the heavily made up science fiction.
> 
> Thank you for your comments and kudos so far! I love hearing from you. I hope everyone is enjoying this (rather long) tale of space pirate boyfriends in eventual love. :')

Now, twelve years later, the same blue eyes stare back at him, large and electric in how livid they are. There’s something hollow about them, as though someone had taken a scalpel and carved out the best parts of Bucky’s humanity. There’s not even a flicker of recognition in the eyes Steve has thought about constantly for the past twelve years. Steve only watches them for a moment, mesmerized, and he can feel all of these truths close to him.  

“Bucky?” Steve breathes out.

The Winter Soldier glares at him, ignoring the name. He advances on Steve and Steve is trapped, the draw of those blue eyes and the familiarity of that face, a face lost to him for so long, knocked momentarily out of reality by the force of his memories. Steve manages to snap back to his current time just as the Winter Soldier picks up the discarded shield. He hurls it at Steve’s head and Steve only manages to duck to keep it from smashing into his skull. The side of the vibranium shield clips his shoulder anyway and he grunts from pain. The force of it knocks him back. He stumbles and the Winter Soldier is on him almost immediately, knives drawn.

He looks down at Steve from above and Steve can see the remnants of Bucky Barnes, hidden somewhere behind a decade of something Steve can’t even begin to guess at. The Winter Soldier closes his metal fingers around Steve’s throat and Steve chokes, his breath catching in his lungs, his lungs trying to expand but finding nothing there to fill them. He struggles against the Soldier, his body panicking like it used to when it was in the midst of an asthma attack. He tries to kick up with his knees and he makes some kind of contact, because the grip around his throat loosens just enough for Steve to hit up with his elbow and roll out from under the Soldier’s grasp.

" _Bucky_ ,” Steve rasps, trying again. “It’s me. It’s Steve.”

The Winter Soldier glares again and swipes forward with his knife. Steve scrambles backwards, trying to get up to his feet. His phaser lies by his side, forgotten.

“We used to--the punk from training,” Steve makes out hoarsely. He tries to push himself up to his feet and gets as far as a squatting position before the Winter Soldier scoops up the phaser and aims it at Steve.

Steve tips out of the way just as the blast scorches through the air.

“ _Bucky_ ,” Steve tries. “You  _know_ me.”

The Winter Soldier’s movements slow for just a moment. This, what Steve said, makes him, if possible, even angrier.

“I _don’t_ know you,” the Winter Soldier finally says. His voice is all venom and grainy anger. The hollowness is there too, but Steve doesn’t have time to think about that. For all that’s different, Steve can hear it--the voice he’s never forgotten.

“You _know me_ ,” Steve insists and the Winter Soldier loses his composure. He sends out round after round of phaser shots and Steve only barely rolls out of the way of most of them. Finally, one of them catches his thigh and he shouts in pain. The burning rips through skin, a piercing heat that’s unbearable both inside and out. His thigh feels like it's being boiled from the inside. His breathing comes up shallow and he stops moving. There’s another shot that catches his upper arm and Steve’s head tilts back onto the rooftop, his eyes rolling into his head slightly. He's in so much pain he can barely breathe. He stops moving.

The Winter Soldier comes over him again, weight bearing down on Steve's torso, knife bearing down at Steve’s throat, his look furious and cold and somehow, Steve thinks, a little afraid.

“Buck,” Steve grits out. He's tired. The fight ebbs out of him slowly, a draining Steve Rogers hasn’t felt in a long time. “You remember me, don’t you?”

The Winter Soldier doesn’t like that question. His knife bites into Steve’s side, just missing his heart. Steve gasps, his nerve endings lighting on fire, a sharp and overwhelming pain concentrated around where the blade is buried.

The Winter Soldier retrieves the knife again.

“ _Look_ at me,” Steve demands, or maybe begs, a little. His hand darts out, holding the other man’s flesh arm in as strong a grip as he can with what remaining strength he has left. His fingers curve around bicep and the Winter Soldier moves faster than Steve thought was possible, throwing Steve’s arm off and slicing away at it with his knife. The blade tears easily through Steve’s jacket sleeve and pierces the skin underneath, although the cut is shallow. Steve hisses in pain, but he doesn’t give up. He grabs the Winter Soldier’s wrist with one hand and when the other man freezes, Steve wraps his remaining free hand around the same wrist, so there is just the blade between them and a look of pure hatred and panic illuminating the Soldier’s face.

“I. Do. Not. _Know. You_ ,” the Winter Soldier grits out again. He wraps his metal fingers around Steve’s throat again, tightening them slowly as his body hovers forcefully over Steve’s, his long, dark hair splaying around his face and, strangely, tickling Steve’s chin.

“You _do_ ,” Steve breathes out. His lungs are burning. His arm is burning and his leg and his side and the muscle in his arms as he fights to keep the Soldier’s hand and knife away from his body are burning. Everything is burning and he’s fast losing his reserves. "I know you do."

The Winter Soldier growls and tries to shake his hand free from Steve’s grip, but Steve holds on for dear life, with everything he has and everything that remains to him. The Winter Soldier slowly overpowers him, the knife inching closer to Steve’s chest, a mere inches from being buried somewhere critical, somewhere from which there is no return.

The Soldier’s knees dig into Steve’s bruised and sore sides, his hand slowly throttling the breath and life from Steve’s body, and the knife is a hair's breadth away. So it’s with no little resignation that Steve feels his breath give, his eyes flutter. The strength in his arms drain, the knife moves closer. He can dimly and acutely feel his organs begin to shut down from lack of oxygen. His limbs are on fire. He’s dying. He thinks it’s just as fitting that he dies here, now, after finding Bucky Barnes again.

Maybe in the next life Steve can tell him he's missed him.

The Winter Soldier's metal hand squeezes Steve's throat until Steve's eyes start popping out, his skin turning purple. The last of Steve's strength fails him. He feels an agonizing stab near his underarm as his hands fall to his sides, the Soldier driving the knife into the closest place he can find. 

Steve screams in pain.

Then everything explodes.

  
An arrow explodes to the side of them and the Winter Soldier is blasted away just enough from Steve’s body that Sam is able to isolate him. He sends disc after particle disc and some of them sink into the Soldier’s abdomen, while others hit his metal arm. The Soldier falls back with a gasp and a grunt.

“Stark!” Sam shouts into his com.

“You remember the toy I gave you?” Tony says. “Jam the silver button and throw it at the asshole.”

Sam painfully digs in his pocket for a small silver sphere, similar to the one he was using to scan guests at the palace. His right shoulder is nearly crushed from pain, so he uses his left hand to jam the button and throws the ball at the Winter Soldier. The ball spirals in the air just as Clint shoots one last arrow into the scene. Unlike his usual, this one has a black metal tip with a small chrome circular disk attached at the end. The arrow homes in on the Winter Soldier’s arm and makes contact just as Sam’s silver ball stops just above the Soldier’s head. It freezes midair and then, with a sound much like static electrical discharge, a copper-accented holographic dome unfolds around the Winter Soldier and slams into the ground. The Winter Soldier shouts in a foreign language in frustration as the arrow sticks to his arm, sending out a discharge of its own. He tries to rip the arrow off, but only succeeds in breaking the shaft. The tip of the arrow, disc and all, sticks relentlessly to the metal of his arm. The signal that ripples out jams his arm, the shifting metal plates sticking in place. The Winter Soldier tries to move it, tries to flex his metal fingers, but they don't respond.

He roars in frustration and tries to punch the copper dome, but it stays in place, undisturbed. He punches it again. The dome doesn’t move. He punches again and again, but there’s no breaking. He’s trapped.

“Gotcha,” Tony’s voice comes, triumphantly.

“Fuck, Steve,” Sam says. He grimaces, clutching at his own shoulder, but falls to his knees next to his captain. “Steve, talk to me.”

Steve’s breathing shallowly through the pain, his eyes fluttering open and closed, his chest barely moving. He hurts so much he thinks he’s back in his childhood, when his body knew nothing else.

“ _Bruce_ ,” Sam grits out into the com. Behind him, the Winter Soldier is still shouting in Russian.

“I’ve had enough of you,” Tony’s voice comes, bristling with irritation. There’s the sound of keys clacking across the coms and suddenly there’s a large zapping sound, not unlike an animal being caught in a large electrical field. The Winter Soldier lets out an angry shout as the electrical shock discharges from the arrow on his arm. His body crumples inside the dome with a thud.

“Should we be worried?” Loki’s voice comes mildly. He doesn’t sound like he’s worried. He sounds like he’s enjoying himself.

“About Half Metal Jacket over there? No. Of Cap, maybe,” Tony says.

Bruce’s voice comes calmly over the coms. “Sam, can you stabilize him?”

“He’s bleeding a fair bit,” Sam says through teeth clenched in pain. “I’m adding pressure. I can’t fly us up, Soldier over there tore my wings.”

“So much damage for a guy who looks like he hasn’t gotten a decent haircut in three years,” Tony says.

“Tony, shut up,” Bruce snaps. “Sam, continue adding pressure to the wound. We can’t have him bleed out before we get him to Medical. Keep him still as much as you can. How’s your arm?”

“Been better,” Sam says. “Doesn’t matter. Steve’s looking really pale, Bruce. He’s shaking. If he starts convulsing--”

“No. _Loki_ ,” Bruce says sharply.

“In lieu of more inane commentary from Stark, I will start the transporter,” Loki says, as though it was his idea to begin with. “Hold onto the captain or he will be left behind.”

The last thing Steve remembers is Sam hovering above him, face dotted with sweat, eyes almost glazed with pain. Sam’s left hand is pressed against the bleeding knife wound, Steve’s blood coating his hand, while his right arm hangs limply at his side.

“Don’t die on me now, Steve,” Sam’s voice comes to Steve as through a thick dream. “We have a $$100,000,000 bounty to split and I want to make sure Stark gets screwed out of his portion as much as possible.”

For once Tony Stark doesn’t argue.

Steve’s eyes flutter shut.

  
He drifts somewhere in between dream and memory, a hallucination of throttling metal arms and blue eyes that can recognize him, but choose not to. He can feel Bucky’s fingers in his hair, flour coating his fingers, a thoughtful smile on his lips. Steve wants to catch those lips, save them for a day when they will no longer be within reach.

 _Bucky_ , he says in his hallucination and reaches out with fingers that can’t move and can’t feel. _I’m sorry for not recognizing you_.

But that doesn’t feel right either and Bucky tilts his head, vacant smile still on his face. There’s something hostile about it. His eyes are angry and they swallow Steve hole. He wants to bring him back, remind him of the kitchen, and the nights outside of the tent, under the stars. They’re a cliche and he thinks, somehow, they knew, Morita and Gabe Jones and Dum Dum Dugan, men who Steve hasn’t thought of or remembered in almost a decade.

Bucky slips through his fingers again, his metal arm disintegrating into cool liquid, sliding over Steve’s open, upturned palms. Steve wants to cry, but the metal bites into him, burns his leg and his shoulder and parts of his chest as it seeps into his skin, poison his blood. He screams instead and the Winter Soldier takes deadly aim with the phaser and shoots him through the heart.

  
There’s an urgent beeping sound as Steve’s eyes flutter open. His vision swims blurrily above him, but he can see the chrome of a ceiling. He’s nauseated and his limbs feel heavy, as though something is numbing and sedating him. He tries to remember what he had been dreaming about. Something about eyes.

“Hey,” a voice says softly to his right side.

Steve isn’t ready to turn his head yet. He can barely keep his eyes open.

“Don’t worry,” the voice says. It’s someone he knows, he thinks. “You’re gonna feel heavy and sleepy. You had a bit of blood loss and some third degree burns. Some charred flesh thanks to the knife wounds and phaser shots. You got lucky though, Cap. Somehow he missed your vitals.”

The words means little to nothing to Steve. His eyes flutter closed. He feels like he’s going to be sick.

“Nausea’s a side effect of the anesthesia shot,” the voice says. “It’s not fun, but it’s the most effective way to stun a person numb so they can undergo surgery.”

“He had surgery?” a different voice asks from Steve’s right. The voice sounds sedated itself. Sleepy, almost drunk.

“No, Sam," the first voice says. “You underwent surgery. Cap has some fun stitches gluing his skin back together. The gun kinda melts the skin on either side of the open wound, so it hurts like hell.”

“Ow,” Sam says.

Ow, Steve agrees mentally.

“I used the echo grafter,” the first voice says, speaking to Steve again. “So there’ll be some raised skin, some light scarring, but otherwise you won’t be able to tell you were cut open.”

Steve manages a concerned gurgle near the back of his throat.

“The burns were more extensive than after the Sitwell mission,” the voice--oh, _Bruce_ , Steve thinks--Bruce says. “I did a combination of the extra strength coolant and a mixture from an old plant called aloe vera. That should help cool and soothe it as much as possible. You’re gonna be grateful for the nausea now when the anesthesia wears off and you can feel your skin uh, healing.”

Steve lets out another gurgled sound, this time more urgent.

“I know,” Bruce says, apologetically. “There’s only so much technology and medicine can do. Sometimes the human body just needs time to repair itself. And you got real, real lucky, Cap.”

Steve sighs. His eyes are tearing up from the brightness so he lets them close again.

“Just gurgle some more if you need more painkillers,” is the last thing he hears Bruce saying before he drifts back off to sleep.

  
His body has suffered enough damage that it takes a couple of days of constant shots of painkillers and plenty of coolant before Steve starts to emerge from his vaguely hallucinatory sleeps to something resembling a conscious, thinking human being. Every time he wakes up he can barely remember what he dreamt in his delirium, but his dreams and hallucinations alike feel the same, as though there’s a theme playing through his subconscious that keeps slipping through his grasp every time he regains consciousness.

He still has the impression of angry blue eyes.

It’s on the third day that he tries to sit up while Bruce is out at lunch. Sam has since left Medical, his injury not having been nearly as serious as Steve’s. His arm is in a sling and he visits Steve every day, wincing in pain as his bones set and heal, but otherwise in a good enough mood to keep Steve updated on the course of the ship. The Winter Soldier is being held in the Bounty Bay in the same copper dome Tony concocted to be the chamber for his capture. Sam tells Steve that the Winter Soldier had been knocked out by the arrow’s disabling discharge and that Loki had transported him and the dome back together, somehow. Tony had dragged the then-unconscious Winter Soldier back to the Bounty Den and Bruce had given him a sleeping shot to keep him sedated while they set up the dome again and figured out what to do with Steve out.

“I kept the ship more or less together,” Sam says. He’s sitting to Steve’s right and flipping through a magazine on his holopad. “So I’m pretty sure we don’t need you anymore, if you wanna just retire.”

“What happened after?” Steve manages to ask. He’s still sore and in near constant pain, but he’s tired of being out of action and he’s forced himself to sit up with Sam’s reluctant help. He winces at the skin that pulls at his glue stitches and for a brief moment he refuses to move in case the skin tears again, but luckily it holds. He doesn’t feel like dealing with Bruce’s disappointed-angry face today.

“Loki transported Thor back before you got KO’d,” Sam says. “He was...well, livid. Thor’s fine, but the phaser shot burned his arm. I thought Loki was going to set Vanaheim on fire, honestly. Bruce and Nat have had to uh, restrain him from the Soldier. He’s banned from the Den.”

Steve frowns.

“Loki seemed calm during the extraction. From what I remember.”

“Yeah,” Sam snorts. “He’s full of shit when it comes to Thor.”

“What about the King?” Steve asks.

“Nat got him to safety. He’s granted us a full pardon,” Sam grins. “You called that one right.”

Steve flexes his fingers while frowning. He tries to roll a shoulder and grunts at the hot pain that boils out from his burn and knife wounds.

“Bruce is gonna kill you if you keep that up,” Sam raises an eyebrow.

Steve ignores him. Instead, he frowns deeper, pressing a palm at the scabbing on his thigh.

“So he’s in the Bounty Den?” he asks.

“Yeah,” Sam says.

“Has he said anything?”

Sam snorts.

“He’s not exactly the talkative type. Clint checked on him once and apparently he kept muttering something about I don’t know him and I knew him in various languages. He kinda short-circuited for a while there.”

Steve looks up sharply, his breathing coming out unevenly.

“He said he knew him?”

“Yeah,” Sam says slowly. He raises an eyebrow. “Steve?”

Steve looks at him blankly, his mind reeling. Everything around him sounds muted, as though he’s hearing his surroundings underwater. If the Winter Soldier was confused, there was a chance there was still someone left in there. The hope that Bucky Barnes wasn’t completely lost to him forever. Steve licks his dry lips and tries to ignore the sound of his erratic heartbeat in his ears.

“Steve, what aren’t you telling me?” Sam asks. He’s astute, Sam. He’s always been able to call Steve out on his shit, which is probably why Steve likes him half as much as he does.

“I know who he is,” Steve says. Sam’s movement stills next to him.

“Cap says what?”

“The Winter Soldier,” Steve admits. “I knew him.”

“You know him,” Sam repeats cautiously. Skeptically.

“We were friends,” Steve says, a little helplessly.  

Sam slowly turns his holopad off. He looks pointedly at the clock above the door.

“You have half an hour until Bruce is back,” he says. “Better start talking.”

Steve tells him the story.

  
It takes another day for Bruce to give Steve the all-clear and even when he does, he instructs Sam to make sure their Captain doesn’t do anything stupid, like try to go back to the Gym. On an unrelated note, someone closes the Gym and reprograms the code temporarily, which Steve finds out one day when he tries to escape Sam’s careful eye and do exactly the stupid thing Bruce told him not to do.

“We’re setting course for Midgard,” Loki tells him when he finally takes his seat at Command again. “The Spectral Cloak is on to mask our signature and we may need to detour through the Negative Quadrant so we do not pick up tails.”

Steve frowns. He’s still moving gingerly, although Bruce’s medicine has worked its miracles already. He shifts in his chair, tapping his fingertips against the arm.

“The Spectral Cloak?” he says. “Do we have the fuel and energy for that?”

“No,” Loki says, unconcerned.

“We didn’t have much of a choice,” Sam says from his console. “There were a couple of arguments about it.”

“And using our last measure resort without sufficient energy source won out because?”

“Our antics on Vanaheim did not go unnoticed, surprisingly,” Thor’s deep voice explains. “The foiled attempt on the King and Queen received ample coverage as did the assassination of the Alfheimian President. Helmut Zemo did not care to keep the identity of the bounty team responsible a secret.”

“Of course he didn’t,” Steve mutters. He has a distinct throb near his temple and a silent and perhaps transparent desire to strangle Helmut Zemo.

“We have fought off more than one tail while you have been resting, Captain,” Thor says.

“They leaked we have the Winter Soldier?”

“No,” Loki says. He’s lazily scanning the few quadrants they’re passing through for undetectable threats and space debris. “The media did not have enough information to identify the hitman. The Underground, on the other hand.”

“It’s going crazy, apparently,” Sam say as Steve raises an eyebrow. “Satellite images of us, blurry holos of the Winter Soldier. Some of the accounts are pretty close to what happened, some of them are wild even by our standards.”

“So the Underground thinks we have the Winter Soldier,” Steve says. “Amateur bounty teams?”

“Some amateur,” Sam nods. “Some less so. Somehow it’s stayed off of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s radar so far or we wouldn’t have gotten out of Vanaheim.”

“Did we take any damage?” Steve asks with a wince. He already has a rough guesstimate of how much their upgrades and previous damage--half-patched by Tony in lieu of having any time or money to spare for real repairs--will cost them, but any more and the Winter Soldier bounty itself might not be able to save them.

 _The Winter Soldier bounty_ , a voice inside his head echoes in a warning tone. He’s not ready to think about the consequences of that right now, so he pushes the thought and the voice to the back of the veritable moon of thoughts threatening to topple him.

“No,” Thor supplies. “They were barely worthy of our time or attention, Captain. On Asgard these ships would be an insult to the Gnome people.”

Loki snorts as Steve and Sam look at Thor with a slight sense of skepticism.

“The Gnome people,” Thor blinks back at them. “You have not heard of them?”

“Can’t remember the last time I saw a Gnome Person on the cover of People,” Sam says. Steve can hear the sarcasm, but Thor lives in a post-sarcasm universe sometimes.

“They are not put on magazine covers, Sam Wilson, for they live underground,” Thor says. He’s serious in only the way Thor can be. “They were driven there centuries ago after they attempted to betray Asgard by selling us to the Dark Elves. Now they live in shame and ignominy, but even they would be insulted by the caliber of bounty teams who have been sent to steal the Winter Soldier from us.”

Steve doesn’t really know what to say to this, but it’s Loki who lets out a puff of laugh.

“Ignominy?” he says with a quirk of a smile. He reaches over his console to beckon Thor forward with his index finger. “Someone has been reading his word of the day calendar.” 

“I am not stupid, Loki,” Thor protests in irritation. Steve notes that this does not stop him from accepting the vaguely amused kiss Loki offers.

“No, of course not,” Loki says with a smile. It is unclear how sincere he is being. Then again, it is usually unclear how sincere Loki is being.

“How long can we last under the Spectral Cloak?” Steve asks, interrupting them.

Loki licks at his lips and tilts his head.

“We have enough power to last one month cloaked if we wish to make it to Midgard without refueling,” he says. “The drift will likely carry us to Midgard after this period, although at half the pace. We will be uncloaked and vulnerable to all attacks and tails. If we stop to refuel, the ship can manage two months cloaked. Three if the fates favor us.”

Steve frowns. He doesn’t particularly care for either option. Refueling will expose them to a time lag and the risks that come with docking with a high-profile bounty on board. On the other hand, if they choose option one, cloaking without refueling, they'll be invisible for the next month but remain uncloaked for at least three months after, on drift to Midgard. The thought makes Steve's skin itch. Four months between their current location and Fury leaves too much time for something to go wrong. Although it would at least give him some time to think, he supposes.

“We have to go through the Negative Quadrant either way?”

“The Quadrant would save us energy in cloaking,” Loki replies. “However, the time lag getting through it is greater than in less dense areas of the galaxies. We would be trading energy for time.”

Steve hates the amount of time they lose when traveling through the Negative Quadrant. Because of the composition of that particular space--using physics and the science of matter in ways that Steve has never been able to wrap his head around despite being explained ad nauseum by both Tony and Loki--which exists not in between any galaxies, but slanted off to the side, somehow beyond the reaches of time and the Nine Galaxies, the Quadrant takes a certain amount of time to enter and twice that amount of time to exit, not counting how slowly the drift is through that stretch. In other words, the Negative Quadrant sucks up normal time if a crew isn't careful. Once, _The Avenger_  had accidentally hit the Negative Quadrant on its way to Alfheim and they had unwittingly lost six months because Loki was not yet their navigator.

“I hate all of our options,” Steve informs the Jotun.

Loki shrugs carelessly.

“I guess,” Steve rubs his temples. The stress is settling around his shoulders thickly, his brief respite from leading the ship having dissipated with his open wounds. “Set course through the Quadrant. Can you control our time there?”

Loki licks his lips again, drumming his fingertips on his console and calculating the numbers in his head.

“Yes,” he says finally. “Two months.”

Losing two months floating through dead space isn’t Steve’s idea of a good time, but at least they can figure out how to make it to Midgard without having to fend off every rogue space pirate along the way.

“Will our continuance in normal space after not be rife with more attacks if we allow two months of the story to circulate on the Underground?” Thor asks.

“It’ll give Tony time to repair some of the canons and thrusters,” Sam points out. “Maybe come up with some new toys.”

“I think it’s more dangerous to dock along the way,” Steve says. “Where would be our nearest port, Loki?”

Loki slides up a large grid of the Nine Galaxies. There’s a beeping green dot that denotes where _The Avenger_ is currently drifting. Behind them is marked Vanaheim and Hel. They’re currently beeping toward Muspelheim.

“If we continued cloaking with no adjustment to speed, we would either be able to survive to Alfheim or Svartalheim if the drift acts in our favor.”

“That’s two or three galaxies from Midgard,” Steve sighs.

“I don’t think Alfheim is the peak of stability right now, Cap,” Sam says. “That structure was set to topple even before the President’s assassination and now it’s a complete disaster.”

Steve doesn’t have any answers. He’s sore and hungry and tired and his mind is more than a little preoccupied by what he needs to do next.

“Set course for the Quadrant,” Steve finally says, waving at Loki. He stands up from his chair and dimly considers asking Bruce for more sedatives. “It’s not ideal, but we’ll have some time to figure it out. In the meantime, see if you can deflect chatter on the Underground.”

“Not my job,” Loki replies.

Steve’s eye twitches.

“Then,” he says, baring his teeth. “Tell whoever’s job it is.”

Loki smirks and Steve considers punching him through his stupid teeth. He probably would consider it if Thor wasn’t standing next to him with an expression on his face that warns Steve that he, Thor, knows exactly what he’s thinking and why and while he, Thor, does not blame him, Steve, he, Thor, also will not be able to stop himself from stopping him, Steve, likely with brute force.  
  
Still, Steve appreciates the warning squeeze Thor gives Loki’s shoulder, which makes the Jotun wince unhappily.

  
Sam accompanies him out of Command and down the hallway before he says anything. He puts a hand on Steve’s shoulder and Steve halts to a stop, body stiffening.

“Steve,” Sam says warningly.

“I’m the Captain, Sam,” Steve says without looking at him. “It’s my job to see our bounty.”

“Yeah, I get that,” Sam says. He doesn’t offer follow up, probably because he knows that Steve will break even without him saying anything. As usual, he’s not wrong.

“There’s nothing wrong with assessing the situation,” Steve insists. “It would be weird of me to not see him. Make sure he’s secure.”

“Uh huh,” is all Sam says. He hasn’t let go of Steve yet.

“I’ll be fine, Sam,” Steve says after a moment. “I promise.”

“He’s not the same guy you knew, Steve,” Sam says. “The guy you knew, Bucky Barnes--your friend or, whatever the two of you were. He’s not there anymore. He doesn’t remember anything except what his captors told him. He’s a scrambled robot up where it counts.”

Steve frowns, turning to face Sam.

“Captors?”

“Natasha’s persuasive,” he says. “We got some answers. And more questions.”

Steve feels sick. There’s nausea churning in the pit of his stomach.

“He was brainwashed?” he asks, reading in between the lines. He thinks about what he can remember before he passed out. Honestly, a lot of the minutes leading up to him falling unconscious are blurry. What’s not blurry is how angry and blank Bucky looked, nothing there but loathing. What he doesn’t forget is that one, brief moment where he actually looked afraid.

Sam sighs.

“Talk to him,” he says. “But don’t get your hopes up. Whoever you knew, he’s not there anymore.”

Steve doesn’t say anything. Maybe having hope is too naive, but if Bucky said he remembered him--

“Steve,” Sam says. “Tell me you understand.”

“I know, Sam,” Steve sighs. “Whoever’s waiting for me in there, he’s not the Bucky Barnes I used to know.”

Sam looks dubious about whether he believes Steve and he might be right to feel and look that way. But if Sam Wilson is good at one thing, it’s knowing when to leave good enough alone. He claps Steve on the shoulder comfortingly.

“Call me if you need back up,” he says. “I’ll have my com on.”

“Thanks Sam,” Steve says. And he means it.

  
The Bounty Den is located near the rear of the ship. In terms of layout, _The Avenger_ post-Steve Rogers makes strategic sense. Command is at the front of the ship and the Strategy Bay, Kitchen, Gym, Lounge, and Living Quarters are scattered after. The Medical Port comes up next and takes up a substantial portion of the ship because it was converted from two separate compartments into one large area to accommodate patients as well as any experiments the doctor wanted to run. Bruce appreciates the space and test tubes and haunts his Port as though his soul feels pain to leave it for too long. The Engine Room--the only one which was left for its original intended purpose after the renovation--connects the Medical Port to the rear of the ship by bridge. The Bounty Den is then placed carefully between the Engine Room and Tony’s mad scientist lair. There’s an exit port that finishes the length of the ship, although there are more ports located underneath the main level.

The Den is separated from both the Engine Room and the Mechanical Bay by double vibranium-reinforced doors and codes that change with each new bounty. In the Winter Soldier’s case, his particular brutality and the high risk nature of his captivity required more than the usual precautions. Where the bounties are usually kept in a large space guarded by a carefully engineered force field that has a high voltage electrical shock value if touched, the Winter Soldier’s space is subdivided by the careful copper dome enclosing him.

As Steve steps into the Den the first thing he notices is the Winter Soldier staring up at the small silver ball floating in the air near the ceiling, from which the dome is being generated. The Soldier is lying listlessly on a cot. He seems to have been treated for what few wounds he picked up during the fight and capture. His metal arm lies curled at his stomach. There’s still the tip of an arrow sticking to one of the plates. The plates don’t shift. His flesh arm is pillowed under his head. He seems empty in a way Steve can’t wrap his head around.

The door slides shut behind him with a soft hiss. The Winter Soldier doesn’t move. He doesn’t even stop staring at the silver ball above him.

Steve takes a couple of steps forward and stops. He doesn’t know how to do this. He doesn’t know how to reconcile the ruthless, bloody stranger he sees in front of him with the funny, overly good-hearted boy he mistakenly brawled with so many years ago. Steve hasn’t seen him in ten years and all he can think is how long Bucky's hair is now.

“Soldier,” Steve says, but that sounds wrong. “Bucky.”

The Winter Soldier doesn’t stir at first. Then, almost lazily, he turns his head.

The air seems thicker in the Den, somehow, and Steve is transfixed by that face, a face that’s lost its curves and warmth, but is still fundamentally the same. He looks tired, somehow beyond his body and mind. If Bucky looks blank, it’s perhaps the kindest look he’s held in years.

“Do you remember me?” Steve asks. He takes another step closer.

The Winter Soldier, or Bucky, stares at him.

“You said you remembered him,” Steve says. “You said you remembered me.”

The Winter Soldier doesn’t move. He doesn’t even blink.

“Was that a lie?” Steve asks. There’s a part of him, the part that feels the heaviness in his stomach like a lead ball, that doesn’t want to know the answer. Then there’s another part of him, the part that remembers lying close to Bucky in his bunk and not making the move his body wanted him to make, that thinks Bucky would remember him in every lifetime. Steve is perhaps even more naive and even more self-centered than he had previously thought.

The Winter Soldier is still, silent. Then, slowly, he unfolds his arm from under his head. He painstakingly pushes himself to a sitting position on his cot. His flesh hand grips the edge of his cot as he leans forward, shoulders hunched. His metal arm lies uselessly along his side.

He says nothing for long enough that Steve thinks this is all that he’s willing to give him, this movement, and a stare with an intensity that is more than a little discomfiting.

There’s a chair resting at the side of the room. Steve pulls it over to a few feet in front of the dome. He sits, elbows on his knees, so he too is facing Bucky, leaning toward him.

They sit like that, studying one another, for a long time, in silence. Steve’s eyes trace every part of this new Bucky--the curves of the metal arm, the sunken, haunted eyes, the long, stringy hair, the stubble across a jaw that was familiar once. Bucky has gained muscle in the way Steve has, but he can almost see the puckered skin under his shirt, years of scars that Steve has no words for. His thighs are thick and the combat boots that lace up to his calves provide him with the remaining threat of force the rest of him, at the moment, does not. His stance is taut, tense. He seems as though he’s forgotten how to relax or maybe that he never knew how to begin with.

“Who are you?” the other man says finally. The Winter Soldier’s voice is hoarse, gravelly, raspy with disuse. There’s no warmth or kindness there, the charisma that Bucky once wore like a second skin gone.

“My name is Steve,” Steve says.

“Steve,” the Winter Soldier echoes. There’s no recognition there and it hurts Steve more than he cares to admit.

“Steve Rogers,” Steve says. “I’m the Captain of this ship.”

“The Avenger,” the Winter Soldier says.

“The Starship Avenger,” Steve confirms.

The Winter Soldier watches him with unguarded suspicion. His eyes rake over Steve’s body in the same way Steve’s had done to him, but without any sort of interest. The Winter Soldier’s glance is withering, as though he’s calculating all of the points of threat and all of the weaknesses Steve possesses.

“Do you remember me?” Steve asks.

For the briefest of moments something flickers across the other man’s expression. Maybe it’s doubt. Maybe it’s nothing at all.

“No,” he says.

Steve nods. If Bucky has been brainwashed, there’s no reason he would know him, remember him. Anyway it’s been ten years and Steve looks a lot more tired than he had at nineteen.

“Okay,” Steve says. “What do you remember?”

The Winter Soldier doesn’t say anything.

“Who are you?” Steve asks instead, trying another track.

“My name is,” the Winter Soldier starts, then hesitates. He looks confused, suddenly, the most readable and open expression Steve has seen on his face so far.

“Bucky,” Steve says. “Your name is James Buchanan Barnes. You hated the name James. Said it made you sound old and stuffy. Your older sister named you Bucky and you never answered to anything else when you had a choice.”

The Winter Soldier’s expression turns stony.

“No,” he says. “I am the asset.”

It’s Steve’s turn to frown now.

“The asset?”

“The asset,” the Winter Soldier repeats. He doesn’t offer any other explanation.

“Asset to who?” Steve tries.

The Winter Soldier gives him a strange look. He looks as though he’s struggling with something. In the end, his eyes glaze over again and any fight that was in him goes out in a flicker.

“HYDRA,” he says listlessly.

“HYDRA,” Steve repeats. He’s never heard of HYDRA before. “Who’s HYDRA?”

The Soldier says nothing.

“Buck,” Steve says. “What’s HYDRA?”

The Soldier shakes his head. His expression is closed. He releases his hand from his cot and pulls his legs up again.

“We’re done,” is all he says. The finality to his tone is mirrored by his body language. He lies flat on his cot again, flesh arm pillowed under his head. He stares back up at the small silver circle, face shuttered, everything else without expression.

“Bucky,” Steve says, but he knows it’s useless. He tries for a few more minutes to get Bucky’s attention, but the Winter Soldier ignores him completely.

After another ten minutes of frustration, Steve finally sighs and gets up from his seat. He replaces it back against the wall. He told Sam he understands and he does. That doesn’t stop the sinking feeling in his chest as he keys in the code to leave the Den, leaving behind the closest friend he's ever had, not that his friend remembers it.

  
“You look like shit,” Natasha offers as she slides onto the couch next to him.

“Well I was going for ruggedly handsome, but you can’t win them all,” Steve says with a shrug. He’s sitting on a couch in the Lounge, watching the TV set play some old movie Sam really likes about a park and bloodthirsty dinosaurs. Steve himself doesn’t care that much for movies that aren’t historical or, well, documentaries, but he’s been called Old Man enough by everyone on the ship--including Tony Stark who is, in fact, the oldest person on the ship--that he’s stopped trying to change the channel in the Lounge to something more educational.

“I can see the rugged part,” she says. She has a bag of Funyuns and offers it to Steve as though Steve hasn’t told her multiple times that the chemicals in Funyuns are one day going to turn her into a Funyun. She’s pointedly ignored him every time and continued buying and consuming the horrible fake onion ring chips. “How long since you shaved?”

Steve squints at the TV, trying to think.

He settles on, “I don’t feel comfortable answering such personal questions about myself.”

“Ha,” comes Natasha’s dry, unimpressed laugh. She moves the remote from the cushion between them and slides over so she’s next to Steve, pressed against him in a way that would make anyone other than Clint Barton jealous. Luckily for Natasha, Clint is as secure in their relationship as any human can be and has never even batted an eyelash when she’s curled up against various members of the crew--really, only Steve--like a cat.

For his part, Steve smiles and shifts so she fit more comfortably into his side.

“You’re going to turn into a Funyun,” Steve informs her, feeling it his duty to remind her in case she’s somehow forgotten.

“A girl can only hope,” Natasha says. She pops a ring into her mouth and nods at the TV. “You only watch Jurassic Park when you’re stressed. What’s up?”

Steve frowns.

“It was on TV.”

“Sure. I would believe you,” Natasha says. “Only I don’t. Also you’re predictable.”

Steve looks at the TV, puzzled and contemplating what she’s said.

“Why would Jurassic Park be my stress movie?”

“Maybe you feel relaxed watching dinosaurs eat people?” Natasha suggests. “I don’t know. Stop dodging.”

Steve sighs.

“Did Sam tell you?”

“No,” Natasha says. She eats another Funyun.

“But you know,” Steve says.

“Of course I know,” Natasha says. “It’s my job to know.”

“Your job is to hack,” Steve says.

“I don’t hack for fun, Steve,” Natasha says. “I gather intelligence. And we could hear you on the coms before you went down. No one else paid attention, but I haven’t survived this long by not paying attention.”

“You searched for Bucky,” Steve says.

“Cross-referenced all of the files on Steven Grant Rogers with anyone named Bucky,” Natasha says. She watches the screen. It’s raining and an old car gets stuck in the mud. The little girl and boy don’t seem happy about it. Probably because of the dinosaurs.

“Was there a lot?” Steve asks. He watches the screen too, but he’s not paying attention. He has two years worth of memories running through his head and he can’t stop comparing them to the man held captive in the Den right now.

“Not really,” Natasha says. “Well no. Tons about you. Took a while to find James Buchanan Barnes as a mention in your files. Imagine my surprise when I found a police report for you, Cap.”

Steve’s lips twitch. So do Natasha’s.

“I’m a Space Pirate Captain,” Steve says. “I think we all knew something went very wrong somewhere.”

“You and Barnes are only linked through the single police report,” Natasha says. “But it was enough to open his entire history to me.”

“What happened to him?” Steve asks.

Natasha says nothing for a long time. She finishes her bag of Funyuns and crumples it up, throwing it over her shoulder at the Sanitation Receptacle slot in the behind her. Steve doesn’t have to turn to know she made it in. She licks at her fingers and then dusts the rest of the crumbs off of her jeans.

“Natasha,” Steve says finally.

“No,” she says. “It’s not my story to tell, Steve.”

“He’s our bounty, Natasha,” Steve says with a frown. “And I’m your Captain.”

“He is,” she agrees. “And you are.”

“Then?”

“No,” she repeats.

Steve is frustrated and not a little angry. He doesn’t understand Natasha keeping secrets from him and if he trusted her any less he would demand she tell him exactly what she found out. But he does know Natasha and he knows she would only withhold information from him if she felt it absolutely necessary. He also knows she’ll tell him when she thinks is right.

“Is he evil?” Steve asks. The question sounds juvenile even to his ears.

“Very few people are evil. Most people are shades of grey,” Natasha says, almost sympathetically.

“How grey is his shade?” Steve asks.

Again, Natasha takes a long time to answer. When she does, it’s after she’s tilted her head onto Steve’s shoulder.

“He’s had a lot of bad stuff happen to him,” she says. “None of it on his official record.”

“What’s on his official record?” Steve asks. His throat tightens with feeling.

“He was sent to Harudheen on a S.H.I.E.L.D. mission to quell the Dark Elf uprising there,” she says. “And he never came back. His file has been inactive for ten years.”

Steve doesn’t say anything to that, although he tenses.

“But you knew that,” Natasha says after a moment. Her tone isn’t accusatory. It’s soft, almost understanding.

“I knew that,” Steve says quietly.

“You were friends,” she says, as a fact.

“We were friends,” Steve admits. After a minute he tries again. “What’s on his unofficial record?”

“No,” Natasha says softly, gently. She tucks an arm under Steve’s own, threads it through and holds on as she leans against him. Steve stiffens for a minute, but then sighs. The breath rushes out of him like it’s been waiting for the right moment to leave. He leans into her as well.

They finish Jurassic Park together and Steve finds it oddly satisfying when the dinosaurs eat the humans.


	7. The Winter Soldier, Pt. 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My apologies for disappearing! The apocalypse has really been draining me of my will to live, but the space gay must go on.

That night, Steve dreams again, but it’s more memory than nonsense.

\---

**_12 years ago._ **

They’re in basic training for three more months and eventually, after their kitchen duty is over and they still somehow find themselves seeking one another out after training, they have to admit that they’re friends. Their other friends take it about as well as Steve expected them to take it--which is to say that Gabe Jones rolls his eyes so hard they nearly roll out of his head and Morita’s smirk could not be more insufferable if he tried. Bucky’s friends are no better about it. Dum Dum Dugan declares he knew that Barnes had a crush on that runt, Rogers, since how he couldn’t stop sniping about him and Jacques Dernier comes up to Steve, puts a hand on his shoulder, and sincerely thanks him for helping him win a pot he had been running _with_ Dugan and stupid James Montgomery Falsworth who, it turns out, had been friends with Bucky this entire time. The two groups kind of join after that, forming one unit that sits together during meals and spends most of the time sniping at each other in good nature, threatening to drink each other under the table on the weekends, and mostly making fun of Steve and Bucky for having been so annoying for the better part of two months.

Steve couldn’t really say how it happens, but he finds himself sitting next to Bucky during meals enough that eventually the understanding is that Barnes will make room for Rogers and Rogers will sit next to Barnes and they spend most of their meals snickering to each other about the others and what happened during training that day.

“You ever consider leaving enough room for a human?” Steve gripes one day at evening meal when the table is crowded, despite at least two of their friends having been shuttled to the first evening meal shift because of extra work they needed to make up. Bucky is sitting next to Gabe Jones and they’re both taking stock of their sad dinners and reminiscing wistfully about what their mothers used to make for them before they made the unfortunate decision to join S.H.I.E.L.D.

Bucky snorts and scoots over a little more, just enough so that Steve can slip in with his own tray.

“Normal humans yeah,” Bucky says. “But I figure you take up as much space as what, a five year old?”

“Oh he’s hilarious, folks,” Steve says, rolling his eyes. “A regular Charlie Chaplin.”

“Who the hell’s Charlie Chaplin?” Bucky asks with a frown.

“Charlie Chaplin,” Steve repeats. “You know. English comic, 20th century?”

“The fuck’d I know about 20th century comics for?” Bucky asks, perplexed. He stabs a chicken breast with his fork.

“Why _wouldn’t_ you know them? It’s history,” Steve looks at Bucky like he’s grown a second head. “History is important.”

“How old are you really, Rogers?” Bucky eyes him suspiciously. He sticks the spear of chicken breast in his mouth and waves the fork in Steve’s face. “Give it to me straight. 100? 200? That'd explain how early you sleep--”

Steve elbows Bucky and grins triumphantly when the other boy oofs in pain. Steve grabs his roll smugly and tears it in half, sticking the entire half in his mouth. He’s ravenous. Training was brutal.

“You okay?” Bucky asks. He’s watching Steve closely, the way he always watches Steve when Steve looks anything less than 100% fit. It's uncanny, Bucky's ability to see through Steve's posturing bullshit.

“I’m fine,” Steve says dismissively around the roll. He swallows it and crams the rest in.

“You won’t be if you choke on your food,” Gabe says from Bucky’s other side. “

“If I die choking on my food at least you’ll win that pool,” Steve says. He hungrily swallows the roll and washes it down with water. “Yeah I know Dernier corrupted you. Traitor.” 

Gabe shrugs and spoons some mash into his mouth.

“If you’re gonna go, you’re gonna go because you got yourself in a brawl with someone four times your size,” Bucky snorts. He opens a carton of milk because only Bucky Barnes still drinks actual cartons of milk at the age of nineteen. The rest of the trainees use the milk for cereal or to make powdery, artificial drinks that remind them that life was good once and might again be good one day.

“Why do people keep saying that?” Steve asks, puzzled, and this time _Bucky_ is the one who rolls his eyes so hard they might fall out of his head.

“You’re lucky you didn’t get kitchen duty again for the stunt you pulled last week,” Bucky says.

“Hey, no harm, no foul,” Steve says with a shrug.

“You got a black eye.”

“Oh it wasn’t so bad.”

“Your arm is still purple.”

“My arm’s always purple, _Ma_ ,” Steve argues through a mouthful of broccoli. “I have bad circulation.”

Bucky gives up. “You’re an idiot.”

Steve grins and winks at him just as Morita sits down across from them with his own tray.

“Ah,” he says in his quintessential Morita way. Steve shoots him an annoyed look, but it doesn’t even matter because Dum Dum joins them a half second later with a loud, “ _So_ I see Rogers and Barnes are flirting again.”

Steve flushes and Bucky rolls his eyes and deftly changes the subject and they all bicker about proper shooting technique for the next thirty minutes. Steve can only just ignore Bucky’s thigh pressed flush against his own.

  
Steve starts doing better in training, but it’s never enough. He’s still too small and his muscles are constantly in some state of exhaustion, no matter how hard he works. He runs all of the drills twice as often as the rest of his regiment does and he lifts weights and he takes the horrible protein shots that everyone else avoids because they have side effects like nausea and the occasional shooting stomach pain. Fury doesn’t tell Steve he’s not enough, but Steve can feel it. It’s fairly obvious when the rest of the regiment is completing simulations with ease and Steve can only make it through by using his skills of deduction and calculated strategy. He’s always winded halfway through any physical simulation and Gabe and Morita always cover for him, no complaint, but he’s sick of that, sick of the way it makes him feel inside and out, sick of coming so close only for his body to shackle him with its own limitations. He trains until his legs collapse under him and it's still not enough. He never gains any muscle and his lungs never have enough air to fill them.

It’s after one of these bad days, a day of simulation that’s gone all wrong, a day when even Fury couldn’t stop from snapping at Steve, when he’s lying in the middle of the Simulation Tent after everyone has finally left to go shower and to evening meal, that Bucky finds him. Steve’s staring up at the simulated night sky above a prairie landscape, a realistic standby screensaver hovering across the ceiling, contemplating the point of it all. His breath is rattling in his chest louder than usual and he can feel the weakness in his limbs, the ever-present companions of exhaustion and a chill he can never fully shake. He has the beginnings of a headache and something just off enough in his chest that he’s pretty sure he’s getting sick again. He should go somewhere, be warm, eat, but he can’t bring himself to care. If he’s going to fail out of S.H.I.E.L.D. what does it matter if he catches pneumonia again? He couldn’t catch pneumonia any _less_ at this point.

“Hey,” Bucky says as he approaches him. Steve, sprawled like a starfish, looks up at him. He didn’t hear him approach.

“Why aren’t you at meal?” Steve asks.

Bucky shrugs.

“Wasn’t hungry,” he says. He nudges Steve’s hip with a foot. “Why aren’t you?”

“Contemplating staying here until I waste away into nothingness,” Steve answers.

Bucky snorts.

“You’re so fucking dramatic, Rogers.”

“Life is dramatic,” Steve announces, dramatically.

Bucky rolls his eyes and nudges his side again.

“Stop being stupid,” he says. Then, “Need company?”

“Better to die with someone than alone, I guess,” Steve says.

“You’re so annoying,” Bucky says. He sinks to the ground next to Steve, sitting with his legs stretched in front of him, hands propping himself up behind him.

He doesn’t say anything, waiting Steve out. Turns out he knows Steve pretty well by now, because the silence starts to make Steve's skin itch soon enough.

“You’re never not hungry,” Steve says. “What gives?”

Bucky huffs as though that’s the dumbest thing he’s ever heard. Or, at least, that Steve is being the dumbest person he’s ever met, which, well.

“What’s with the third degree?” he asks. “You’re the one moping in the Simulation Tent.”

“I’m not moping,” Steve says.

“Then what do you call this?” Bucky pokes Steve in the shoulder.

Steve sighs. He stares up at the stars above them and feels simultaneously larger and smaller than he does usually.

“I don’t know,” he says. “What’s the point?”

“The point of what?” Bucky asks.

“Trying to be here. Trying to do something good.” A frown tugs at the corners of Steve’s mouth. He looks as miserable as he feels. “What’s the point in trying so hard when I can’t do it? My body won’t let me.”

Bucky doesn’t say anything for a moment. Then he eases himself down, lays next to Steve, shoulders pressed together.

“That’s gotta suck,” he says.

“It’s frustrating,” Steve says. “I know mentally what I need to do. I can plan and I can train, but at the end of the day I can’t do more than what my body physically lets me do.”

“You haven’t been sick in a little while,” Bucky says. It’s a testament to how often Steve falls sick that even Bucky, who’s known him for all of six months, knows that a four week stretch is good for Steve.

“I’ll probably develop pneumonia overnight ‘cause you said that,” Steve says. He’s joking, but Bucky frowns next to him.

“Don’t say that,” is all he says.

“It’s not just sickness anyway,” Steve says. He lets his eyes close. He tries to feel each part of his body, tries to be grateful that any of it functions at all. He must be lacking in appreciation tonight, because he can’t even muster up the energy to pretend. “It’s the way my body works. My limits. It’s just not getting any better.”

Bucky doesn’t say anything for a minute, but then he rolls onto his side so he’s facing Steve.

“You know, considering you have brittle bones and are five foot five inches standing on your tiptoes, you do pretty damn good.”

Steve rolls his eyes.

“No, I’m serious, Stevie,” Bucky says. He’s earnest and genuine in the way that only Bucky Barnes is. Steve tries not to think about the way his stomach feels whenever Bucky forgets himself and calls him Stevie. No one else calls him that. Bucky just started one day and forgot to stop. “Maybe the sims kick your ass sometimes, but there are guys in my regiment who have six inches on you easy and they’re barely making it through. You get through all of them, even if you need a little help. And that’s fine because S.H.I.E.L.D. is about working in a team so you’re never gonna have to work by yourself anyway. All you gotta do is get through this part and you’ll be so good at the rest. You’re the smartest guy here by far, even if you do lack self-preservation.”

Steve doesn’t know what to say for a second. Looking at him like this, Bucky’s expression and voice so sincere, his face so open and trusting, his messy brown hair falling into his bright blue eyes, Steve almost forgets how to breathe. This is the best of Bucky Barnes, the part of him Steve would have missed if he hadn’t gotten his head out of his ass. His chest feels funny in a way he can’t really think about right now.

He rolls onto his side so he’s facing Bucky too.

“Why does everyone keep telling me that?” Steve mutters, but it’s with a small smile.

“Because you got the least self-preservation of any human being I’ve ever met,” Bucky says easily.

“Hey, I’m still alive, ain’t I?” Steve asks.

“Yeah,” Bucky says with a puff of laughter. “Dumb luck.”

“Can’t argue with you there,” Steve says. They look at one another quietly. Steve can feel that funny twist in his chest, more pronounced this time. He reaches forward and brushes Bucky’s bangs out of his eyes. Bucky doesn’t seem to be breathing either, but maybe Steve’s projecting.

“Hey, Stevie,” Bucky says softly.

“Yeah?” Steve watches him closely. His throat is dry, suddenly. He can feel his pulse in his fingertips. His fingers are still in Bucky’s hair.

Bucky opens his mouth to say something. A few different looks flit across his face before he closes it.

“Nothing,” he says, finally.

Steve feels a little disappointed. Then again, he’s not exactly sure what he wanted him to say.

“Okay,” Steve says.

He turns onto his back again to look up at the false sky. Bucky does the same. 

They lie there like that for an hour until Steve starts shivering so much Bucky makes him get up and go back to his tent.

Steve never tells anyone, but in his memory he distinctly remembers the feel of Bucky’s hand in his own.

\---

**_Current Day._ **

Steve is dazed, in the throes of memory, when he wakes up the next morning. He stares at his ceiling unseeingly, blinks away a false night sky that isn't there, and wonders who he angered in a former life to have to be harassed by his memories while he’s asleep as well as when he’s awake. He manages to pull himself out of bed and dress. He finds himself in the kitchen and realizes it’s early enough that no one else on the ship is awake. The silence is deafening, pounding against his ears.

He pours himself a bowl of cereal and eats it against the counter, rubbing a hand over his face to wipe the exhaustion away. There’s cold coffee in the old coffee pot Clint rescued from some antiques shop and which he starts up once a week out of sheer amusement. Cold coffee is horrible, but Steve isn’t feeling like half a human yet and he doesn’t feel like running the drink dispenser at the moment. He pours himself a cup of day old coffee and winces through it, thinking.

He stews in his thoughts long enough for him to hear some noises down the hall toward the Living Quarters. He shoves the bowl and cup in the Sanitation Receptacle, picks up a four pack of protein muffins and a bottle of water, and makes his way through the ship toward the Den.  
  
  
This time when the door slides open, the Den is dark except for the shimmering of the copper dome. The Winter Soldier is on his cot again, his arm still pillowed under his head, eyes closed. He has a blanket that might have been pulled up over him at one point, but is now lying on the floor. The sight stops Steve short, a pang resounding unsteadily in his chest. Bucky always did get too hot in the middle of the night.

The door closes with its familiar hiss. It’s a soft, quiet sound, but the Soldier’s eyes snap open immediately. The lines of his body harden, tensing for the oncoming threat. He doesn’t move or look over. If anything, he seems to be observing through his other senses.

Steve doesn’t say anything this time. He pulls the chair over from the wall again, sits down in front of the dome to wait Bucky out. It takes him nearly twenty minutes of sitting in silence before the other man moves. By this time, Steve’s almost nodded off again.

“Sleep somewhere else,” the Winter Soldier’s voice wakes him up.

Steve jerks with a little start and when he blinks the sleep away, the Winter Soldier is sitting up on his cot the same way he was the day before, facing Steve with his fingers clenched around the edge.

“I’m not sleeping,” Steve says automatically.

The Winter Soldier doesn’t look impressed.

“Here,” Steve says. He slides the muffins and the bottle of water across the floor through the copper dome. Things are able to get into the dome, but nothing can come back out, courtesy of Tony Stark's paranoia and previous unlimited funds and access to technology.

The Winter Soldier’s eyes flicker down to the food. He doesn’t look as though he recognizes the purpose of it.

“Breakfast,” Steve says. “I didn’t want to make something and wake the others up yet.”

“Breakfast,” the Soldier repeats.

“What, do you not eat anymore?” Steve asks. He stretches his exhausted muscles. His shirt rides up and the Winter Soldier watches.

“I eat when I need to function,” he says.

Steve raises an eyebrow.

“From what I remember, you eat when you’re hungry too. And bored. And generally feel like eating.” Bucky honestly had an endless appetite, which was always funny to Steve because he also genuinely cared deeply about how he looked. He would always be torn between another slice of pie and running the two extra miles to make up for it. The pie almost always won.

“I am functioning positively,” the Soldier says. “I do not need to eat.”

“Do what you want,” Steve says. “I’m not taking the muffins back.”

The Soldier’s eyes narrow and he watches Steve suspiciously. This is something he seems keen on doing, the Soldier--watching. He barely blinks each time and Steve can never seem to escape the intensity of his gaze.

When Steve doesn’t move, the Soldier unclenches and slowly reaches forward for the bottle of water. In one twist he opens the cap, drains the entire bottle, and crushes the bottle against his palm.

“I’ll get you more,” Steve says.

“Why are you here?” the Winter Soldier asks.

Steve thinks of his dreams, of the memories that keep him up at night.

“I wanted to see you,” he says.

“Why.”

“I want to know what happened,” Steve says.

The Winter Soldier doesn’t say anything in response.

“You disappeared ten years ago, no traces,” Steve says. No emotion passes over the Soldier’s face. “We all thought you were dead. I thought I’d never see you again. And now you’re here. Missing an arm and apparently a mercenary. Want to fill the gaps in for me, Buck?”

“Stop calling me that,” the Winter Soldier says.

“What do you want me to call you, then?” Steve asks. “I’m not calling you the asset.”

“That’s what I am,” the Winter Soldier says.

“That’s what they told you you were,” Steve counters. “You’re not the asset. You’re Bucky Barnes.”

The Winter Soldier looks annoyed. He briefly looks away from Steve, stares at a spot to Steve’s right.

“Tell me something,” Steve says after a minute. “Anything.”

“Or you’ll what, wipe me clean?” the Winter Soldier looks suddenly angry. The passivity of the moment before is scrubbed clean. He looks raw, livid, like a wounded cat. “Torture me until I do what you want?”

Steve recoils at that, his mouth dropped in horror.

“Torture? What? Jesus, no,” he says. He feels sick, his stomach churning. The nausea is almost overwhelming, the thought of Bucky being brainwashed and tortured so thoroughly that he thinks it’s normal now. “I just want you to talk to me.”

“I don’t want to talk,” the Soldier says.

“Okay,” Steve says. He’s too nauseated to push anymore. “Okay.”

Steve sighs and leans forward in his chair, elbows on his knees. He feels the confusion and exhaustion deep in his muscles, knots forming in his back that he can't quite ease. He’s going to have to make a decision sometime in the next two months and without more information from Bucky, he doesn’t know if he can justify not turning him over to Fury. Maybe it’s better this way, then, that Bucky remains nothing more than the Winter Soldier. Maybe Sam’s right and Bucky really is gone. Maybe Steve is looking for something that died a long time ago. It might be best to dissociate. Treat him like another bounty.

He imagines doing that, looking into those familiar eyes and coldly handing him over to an underwater maximum security facility. Losing Bucky again and with him, the answers Steve's been looking for for ten years. His chest constricts in protest.

Steve feels the tension settle heavily in his neck. He’s still a little sore from his injuries, but he feels strong enough for the gym now. He makes a mental note to go box out the stress later. He rubs his hands across his face.

“Breakfast,” the Winter Soldier says suddenly, watching him.

It startles Steve from his tired reverie. He looks up from his hands.

The Winter Soldier looks at him, unimpressed. Mostly unimpressed. Maybe Steve’s imagining it, but he thinks there might be something else there. A softening. He’s probably just delirious.

The other man reaches forward and picks the four pack of protein muffins off the ground. He tears it open and takes one out. Without looking at it he puts the entire thing in his mouth.

Steve waits. The Soldier chews at it passively and then swallows.

“The sustenance is horrible,” he says.

Steve stares at him.

Then he laughs.

The Winter Soldier’s lips don’t twitch, but he looks slightly less angry.

  
Steve manages to convince Thor to give him the new passcode to the Gym Bay. Both Steve and Thor know they’re going to get chewed out by their crewmates later because Bruce’s Two Week Moratorium on Extraneous Physical Exertion is still in effect, but Steve doesn’t care and Thor feels bad enough for his captain that he risks the ire of Dr. Bruce Banner.

They spar for a while, lightly because there’s still the chance that Steve is going to pull something and Thor is recovering from a shot himself. They’re both a little more winded than they usually are at the end of their session. They sit in the middle of the ring, muscles warm and aching in a good way, draining bottles of water.

“Forgive me for intruding,” Thor says between a drink of water. “But you seem distracted today, Captain.”

“Just a little slow, that’s all,” Steve says. “Stitches.”

Thor hums a little in reply. They do their stretches, helping one another stretch out their hamstrings.

“There is a saying in Asgard,” Thor says after a while.

“Hm?”

“The only souls borne by the Valkyries are those that were already lost to them.”

“Not sure I know what that means, bud,” Steve says. He switches his leg. Thor takes a hold of his left foot and Steve stretches forward.

“Valkyries only carry the souls of heroes, Captain. It means you cannot be a hero without having lost a part of yourself long before you have become one,” Thor says. “Does that make sense?”

“Only tangentially.”

Thor sighs and tries again.

“You have the soul of one the Valkyries would be proud to bear, Steve Rogers,” he says. “But to earn the love of a Valkyrie, you must lose yourself now. I see you and I think you are preparing yourself for a hero’s death.”

Steve frowns, but Thor just squeezes his foot.

“I believe you to have the soul of a hero, but I do not wish for you to have any sort of death.”

“I’m not preparing for any kind of death, Thor,” Steve says.

“Do not take Asgardian sayings so literally,” Thor says. “There are many kinds of deaths.”

Steve doesn’t know what to say to that. He takes his leg back and gestures for Thor to extend his arm. They stretch out their arms next, Thor in companionable silence and Steve thinking about what he said.

“I guess I just don’t know what to do,” Steve admits after a while.

“I rather think none of us ever do,” Thor says.

Steve doesn’t ever really understand his conversations with Thor, but somehow, in his own, Asgardian way, Thor always manages to comfort Steve.

“Do you think people can come back from hell, Thor?” Steve asks after they’ve stood up, warm and loose.

Thor doesn’t say anything, but something about his expression indicates he understands what Steve is trying to ask.

“I am in love with one who tried to destroy my planet. He tried to kill our father, unleashed an unimaginable amount of chaos, and tried to kill me as well. He has been to the depths of hell and found it wanting.” Thor runs a thumb across his bottom lip thoughtfully. “I believe a person can be consumed by hatred and the weight of all that he has been through and still be capable of goodness and love.”

He gives Steve a weak sort of smile.

“If I did not, things would be much more difficult for me, wouldn’t they?”

Steve feels, as he often does, that none of them really deserve Thor.

“Thanks, Thor,” he says.

Thor claps Steve on his shoulder warmly.

“Follow what you think to be true and best, Captain,” he says. “We will follow you wherever your decision takes us. But do not give yourself to the Valkyries before it is your time to do so.”

  
The next time Steve visits the Den, he brings a flash-frozen meal tray, an apple that’s been getting too soft from his own quarters, and an electrolyte-replenishing drink that’s bright blue. The Winter Soldier is sitting on his cot this time, his back against the wall, his head tilted back and eyes closed. Steve watches the clean stretch of his throat for a little too long before clearing his own.

“I can smell you,” the Winter Soldier says without opening his eyes.

Steve frowns.

“I showered.”

“You have a distinct smell,” the Winter Soldier ignores him. “A specific scent, a certain rhythm to your breathing, to your walk.”

Steve takes his usual spot across from the copper dome.

“Have you been paying attention to me?” Steve asks with half a smile.

“If you do not observe your enemy, you die,” the Winter Soldier says.

“I’m not your enemy, Buck,” Steve says.

“All the better to kill you with, my dear,” Bucky whispers.

“Are you going to kill me?” Steve asks, as though that’s a normal question.

“Maybe. I am a predator,” the other man answers. “If you let me go, you will be my next mission. Prey.”

Steve breathes in and out a little unsteadily. He has a dozen questions and a familiar sinking in the depth of his chest. He pushes it back and slides the tray, apple, and drink across the floor toward Bucky.

“Maybe your next mission can be lunch.”

The Winter Soldier opens his eyes, tilts his head, considering.

“I am still functioning,” he says. “Sustenance unnecessary.”

“We have very different definitions of what is necessary,” Steve says. “Shut up and eat.”

The Winter Soldier does not seem as though he’s going to bother listening to Steve, but then he unfolds himself from where he’s pulled up into himself. He scoots to the edge of the cot and reaches down to pull the food up to his bed.

“Do you get bored in here?” Steve asks. He watches Bucky open the tray and raise his eyebrows at the plastic utensils.

“I could kill you with this fork,” he says.

“Try not to,” Steve says dryly.

The Winter Soldier studies the contents of the tray and then begins shoveling the food into his mouth. It’s obvious that he’s not tasting whatever he’s eating, which is probably just as well because flash-frozen space food really hasn’t advanced that much in taste since the 22nd century.

“Give me one reason not to turn you over to S.H.I.E.L.D.,” Steve says, watching him.

The Winter Soldier swallows whatever part of the meal he’s eaten and lifts his flesh shoulder in a shrug.

“Do your job,” he says.

Steve lets out a frustrated exhale.

“I want you to give me a reason, Bucky,” he says.

The Winter Soldier abruptly stops eating some frozen spaghetti and twists open the blue drink. He drains half of it in three gulps.

“Don’t have one,” he says. “I’m a hitman. You are a bounty hunter? You caught me. Do your job.”

“You want to be thrown into a pressurized underwater detention facility somewhere?” Steve asks.

“Don’t care,” the Winter Soldier says.

“You’d never see the light of day again,” Steve insists.

“Don’t care,” he says again.

Steve lets out a groan of frustration and aggressively scrubs at his face. The silence between them stretches, both uncomfortable and familiar.

“I like apples,” the Winter Soldier says suddenly.

Steve stops the rubbing and looks up.

“What?”

“Apples,” the Winter Soldier insists. He looks like he’s thinking. “And...plums.”

“Okay?”

“You told me,” he grits out. “To tell you something.”

It takes Steve a moment. Oh. He wasn’t expecting Bucky to remember what he said last time, let alone give him an answer. Warmth gathers in the pit of his stomach, despite himself.

“Yeah,” Steve agrees. “You always liked apples and plums. But hated bananas.”

The Winter Soldier--no, Bucky’s face scrunches for a moment.

“Bananas are not enjoyable,” he says.

Steve gives him a thin smile.

“Why are you here?” the Winter Soldier asks again.

“I wanted to see you,” Steve answers again. “We were friends.”

“Friends,” the Winter Soldier repeats. He puzzles at this word.

“Good friends,” Steve says. “Best friends.”

The Winter Soldier tries to understand this but then shakes his head, unable to do so.

“Okay,” Steve says. “Tell me what happened.”

The Winter Soldier turns stony, chewing on his apple.

“HYDRA,” he says.

“Who’s HYDRA?” Steve asks. He expects Bucky to shut down again, but he doesn’t this time.

“They don’t like S.H.I.E.L.D.,” the Winter Soldier says. “No. They use S.H.I.E.L.D.”

Steve frowns.

“They use S.H.I.E.L.D.? For what?”

“Whatever they want,” the Winter Soldier shrugs.

“How do they use S.H.I.E.L.D.?” Steve asks.

The other man gives him an unimpressed look. He doesn’t answer.

“What do they want?” Steve presses, instead.

The Winter Soldier finishes his apple and flicks the core onto the food tray.

“Chaos,” he says.

That gives Steve pause. It’s not new information, that there are forces in the Nine Galaxies that seek to destabilize the working order of the Interplanetary Governing System. What Steve didn’t know is that they apparently have a name. And an apparatus.

“How did they find you?” Steve asks. He wants to know how a shadowy, anarchist organization bent on interplanetary chaos found, tortured, and brainwashed his best friend.

“Don’t know,” the Winter Soldier says.

“Was it when you disappeared?” Steve insists.

“Don’t know,” he says again.

“Okay,” Steve says. “What about your arm? What happened to it?”

This makes the Winter Soldier pause. He licks at his lips as he thinks, opens the bottle again, and drains the rest of the blue drink. It stains his lips blue.

“I...fell,” he says finally, with a slight frown. “From a train.”

“You fell from a train?” Steve’s throat is a little dry. How is Bucky still alive?

“I can’t remember,” the Winter Soldier admits. “My arm, it hurt. Lots of blood. They gave me a new one. Metal. A weapon. Think it controlled my mind.”

“Who did?” Steve asks. “HYDRA?”

“No,” the Winter Soldier squints his eyes when he thinks. It’s so similar to the look Bucky always wore when he was trying to think of an answer that Steve momentarily forgets the difference. He sees his friend then, his blue, kind eyes, and the stupid swoop of his hair. He half expects him to crack into that smile Steve knew so well, half-sheepish, half-knowing, bright enough to make his features glow and lighten something in Steve’s chest. Then he blinks and the Winter Soldier is back. Frowning. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

Steve sighs, runs a hand through his hair.

“Flour,” the Winter Soldier says.

Steve stops and stares.

“What?”

“You always have flour in your hair.”

Steve stills. His breath stutters in his chest, his lungs contracting jerkily, not filling with enough air. He thinks maybe he’s having another asthma attack, even though he hasn’t had an asthma attack since he was 19 years old.

“Bucky--”

The Winter Soldier shakes his head and breathes out, a little giddily.

“I’m malfunctioning,” he says, as though this is a normal declaration to make. “Let me sleep.”

He shifts away from Steve.

“Bucky, I--” Steve starts, but then stops. What can he say? He doesn’t know why Bucky doesn’t have any memories of his past life, but it’s obvious that whatever brainwashing he went through was thorough and painful at best. But moments like this--Steve thinks maybe Thor’s right and Sam’s wrong. Maybe there’s something here worth saving. That would make things both easier and harder for Steve.  
  
But then, isn’t Steve used to that?

He gets up wordlessly. The Winter Soldier is lying down again, facing the wall away from Steve, his shoulders very slightly shaking.

Steve is almost to the door when the other man’s voice stops him.

“Bucky Barnes,” he says quietly. “My name is Bucky?”

Steve thinks he can hear his heart breaking. He can certainly feel it. He steadies himself against the door frame.

“Yeah,” he says. “Your name’s Bucky.”

“Bucky,” he hears Bucky whisper as the door hisses shut.

  
When he walks in to Command a few hours later, Loki, Natasha, and Sam are waiting there for him. They have the looks of three people who were talking about a person just before the person walked in through the door. Sam at least has the decency to smile and to pretend to look like he wasn’t just engaged in talking about him behind his back. Loki looks uninterested, as usual, and Natasha has her arms crossed at her chest and levels Steve with a Look.

“Why do I get the feeling I’m walking into an intervention?” Steve asks.

“You’re not,” Sam says at the same time Loki drawls, “Because you are.”

Steve gives them both a look of his own and walks over to Loki’s console, studying the intergalactic grid Loki still has pulled up. _The Avenger_ is now beeping in the middle of a dense, black space off to the side of the mapped galaxies. Loki had expertly pulled them into the Negative Quadrant two days ago. The entrance had gone smoothly, although the Quadrant is always a bit of a mindwarp. In the two days they’ve been floating, Cloak off, they’ve already clocked six on the time lag. There’s a counter off to the side of the grid that keeps running numbers, keeping track of how much time they’re losing, down to the millisecond.

“Have you made a decision about docking?” Loki asks.

“I’m still thinking,” Steve hedges.

“About docking or about turning over the Winter Soldier?” Natasha asks bluntly.

Steve, who was about to reach for the grid to enhance a portion, stops short.

“What?”

“Come on, Steve,” Natasha says. “We’re not stupid. We all know there’s something not normal about this situation.”

“What situation?” Steve asks carefully.

“The Winter Soldier.” Natasha’s lips are pressed thin. “You’ve been distracted. And you’ve been visiting him.”

Both Natasha and Sam know pieces of the larger truth, so Steve frowns at this interrogation.

“I’ve been trying to gather information,” he says.

“Bullshit,” Natasha challenges. “You know him, you were friends, you had a previous relationship with him, I don’t care. But he’s our bounty and we went through a lot of trouble to capture him. We deserve not to be lied to.”

“I’m not lying to you,” Steve says. He’s starting to hear the tinny sound he hears when his temper rises.

Sam can tell, because he immediately holds up his hands.

“No one’s accusing you of lying,” Sam says, throwing Natasha a dirty look. “Nat and I both know you have more at stake here than in a normal bounty, Cap. But, we need to all be on the same page.”

“I haven’t decided yet,” Steve says shortly. He has three pairs of eyes watching him carefully, as though he’s done something wrong, as though he’s goddamned incapable of making a decision for himself or, at the least, keeping control of his emotions. He’s trying to breathe in and out through his nose to calm himself. He hates baseless accusations. He hates even more when they have some merit to them.

“You need to make a choice,” Natasha says. She doesn’t sound sympathetic anymore. “We’ve all had to make hard choices. Give up things we wanted or people we loved. If the decisions were easy, we would all be doing something else.”

“We’re nowhere close to hitting our time limit in the Quadrant,” Steve says. “I have time.”

“The more time you spend with him, the harder it’s going to be for you to see clearly,” Natasha says. She looks as thoroughly unhappy as Steve feels.

“I can be neutral,” Steve says.

“No one can be neutral,” Loki offers. He’s been watching this exchange with increasing interest. Loki doesn’t know the details of Steve and Bucky, of course, but he’s intelligent enough to fit the pieces of the puzzle together. “Humans were not born to neutrality, try though they might.”

“Way to be helpful, Loki,” Sam mutters.

Loki shrugs.

“It is helpful. Whether Captain Rogers makes his decision now or in two months, he will be unable to be completely neutral about it. What will shift will be the extent of his desires and loyalties.”

“I’m loyal,” Steve says, angry. “You guys are my priority. The crew is all I care about.”

“We know that,” Sam starts, placatingly, at the same time Natasha forcefully says, “Bullshit.”

She pushes herself off from the console. Her hands are restless, tapping against her crossed arms, fidgeting. It’s a tell that she’s upset or angry or anything other than calm.

“So what?” Steve asks her. “You want me to turn him in? You’re the one who told me terrible things happened to him.”

“Terrible things have happened to all of us,” Natasha says. “That doesn’t excuse what he’s done or the fact that we’ve spent nearly the last year hunting him down. What happens if we keep him, Steve? We’re out of fuel, we’re out of food, we’re out of money. We took a risk on the Winter Soldier for the payout--”

“A risk _you_ encouraged me to take,” Steve says hotly.

“And I would encourage you to take it _again_ because we caught him,” she says. “But we just wasted a year and all of our resources and money if we don’t get our reward.”

“I didn’t know all you cared about was money now, Nat,” Steve levels at her, rather unfairly.

Natasha seems unmoved, looks unimpressed. The rhythm on her arms picks up.

Steve hears the ringing in his ears again, louder than before. Just the thought of turning Bucky in now, when Steve can see the beginnings of a crack in the Soldier, makes Steve want to scream.

“We kept Loki too,” he says instead. “He was our bounty and we kept him. And I don’t think anyone regrets _that_ decision.”

“Stark might,” Loki says mildly.

“We had reserve funds then,” Natasha says. “We weren’t dead broke going on broken ship. You heard what Tony said before we started this mission. The ship was on the brink of disaster then. How much longer do you think it can hold out?”

Steve is so angry he can hardly think. He needs to punch something. If Natasha doesn’t step out of the way, it’s going to be her.

Sam steps in again.

“Relax,” he says, putting a hand out between Steve and Natasha. “Everyone calm down. Romanoff, we have at least a few weeks of non-lag time to come up with other solutions. The ship’s not bust up yet, so we have some time to cross that bridge. Steve, Natasha’s not completely wrong. You want to keep the Winter Soldier for ourselves? Fine. But we need another option.”

Steve and Natasha glare at each other, too angry to speak.

Loki drums his fingertips on the console behind him.

“I do hate to suggest this,” he says finally. “Well no, not really.”

Steve tears his eyes away from Natasha long enough to send Loki an equally irritated glare.

“I don’t have time for your cryptics, Loki.”

“You have an actual prince on board,” Loki rolls his eyes. “Thor may have disinherited himself from Odin, but Odin has not done the same.”

Steve frowns.

“So?”

“What are princes if not made of money?”

“Thor has nothing to do with Asgard anymore,” Steve says.

“He would go back for you if you but asked, Captain.”

“I--” Steve opens his mouth, feeling sick. “I couldn’t ask him to do that.”

“You could," Loki shrugs, "It is an option."

“Find a better one,” Steve grits out.

“No,” Natasha snaps at him. “ _You_ find a better one. Or better yet, carry the fuck through on the option _we all decided on_.”

She shoves past Steve, not bothering to avoid contact on her way out of Command. She leaves behind a tense room, Sam still with his hands up, Loki watching her leave with mild interest. Steve watching the doors close behind her, his throat dry.

“I know you don’t want to hear this Cap,” Sam says. His voice is low, apologetic and firm at the same time. “But she’s right. I know there’s more nuance here than what we’re used to dealing with, but at the heart of it, it’s a calculation we have to make. Do we trade our lives for your friend’s?”

Steve runs a hand through his hair, the weight of sacrifice sinking into his stomach.

“That’s not fair, Sam,” Steve finally replies, softly, tearing his eyes away from the doors and looking back toward Sam, toward Loki, toward the great, yawning black beyond of their windows. “He’s been through--I can’t imagine it. He didn’t choose any of this. He _never_ deserved this. If I can give him his life back, I will.”

“None of this is fair, Steve,” Sam says. “But the decisions we have to make rarely are. And you have to make this decision. If you want to give the Winter Soldier his life back, we’d support you. You know we would. Even Nat would come around, eventually. But you’d trade his life for your own. It’s--” Sam sighs, runs a hand over the small bristles of hair on his head.

“It is a sacrifice that is yours to make,” Loki says. “But do not put the burden of your sacrifice on our shoulders.”

Sam frowns, but he doesn’t disagree with Loki. Steve hears what they’re saying. It isn’t that Steve would be trading Bucky’s life for his crew’s. It’s that he would be trading Bucky’s life for his own, the life that he built for himself after he left S.H.I.E.L.D., the bits of him that rose out of the ashes of who he used to be. And without this, without his crew, without his ship, who is Steve Rogers?

“I don’t know,” Steve exhales. It’s the only answer he can give them.

  
Because Loki’s right, of course. Steve isn’t neutral. He’s been anything but neutral since the moment the Winter Soldier’s mask fell off his face and Bucky Barnes’s blue eyes emerged from underneath. But how do you choose between the thing you’ve been missing from your past, the constant ache pulsing beneath the slow drum of your heart, and the purpose you’ve forged for yourself since?

Steve can see the faces of the people he loves in his mind and he thinks the answer should be simple.  
  
But then, as Sam leaves Command, as Loki turns his gaze back to the grids in front of him, as they continue cutting slowly through the Negative Quadrant, Steve can hear Bucky’s whisper to himself. A barely audible affirmation. _Bucky_ , rolling uncertainly off his tongue, like a question whose answer can save him.  


	8. The Negative Quadrant

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This update is a long time in coming, I know. My apologies! I got sidetracked with a different work (which is completed & can be checked out in my recent works!) and space gays got put in the proverbial intergalactic back burner for a while. 
> 
> As an apologetic offering, this chapter is really goddamn long. And contains the most made up science and science fiction this side of the Nine Galaxies. Enjoy!

Clint finds Natasha in the Gym. Her hair is tied back, her neck and bare abdomen slick with sweat, enough reverberations coming off the punching bag that it’s clear she’s not just now begun taking her aggressions out on the equipment. He watches her carefully as she begins the attack again, sharp jabs with enough force behind them that it’s not technique guiding her wrapped hands, but anger of some sort. Frustration that she can’t channel any other way. It’s funny, he thinks sometimes, because she and Steve are a lot more alike than they would ever care to admit.

He watches her for a few minutes before he steps forward, braces the bag on the other side so she has more resistance to work with. It’s another five minutes before she’s panting so hard she has to stop, almost doubled over. She’s sweaty and frustrated, closed off, and, undoubtedly, right about whatever it is she’s holding inside her. He loves her in ways she would never accept from him or anyone else.

Clint bends down to scoop up her water bottle and hands it to her. She uncaps it and upends the bottle over her head. The tension finally seeps from her shoulders by the time she pins him with her green eyes.

“You heard,” she says, not a question.

“Ran into Sam outside,” Clint says. He takes the bottle back from her, screws the lid back into place.

“He’s being stupid,” Natasha says. She rolls her shoulders.

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Clint says.

“And what? It won’t be the last time?” Natasha asks, sharply. “So it’s okay that he can’t think straight and doesn’t want to?”

“No,” Clint says. “But--”

Natasha raises an eyebrow dangerously.

“That’s what you like about him,” Clint says.

“Now you’re being stupid,” Natasha says. She sounds unimpressed, but her inflection is marginally less sharp than it would be if she actually meant it. After all of these years, Clint can read Natasha Romanoff like the back of his hand. She likes to pretend she doesn’t notice, but it’s what she loves and hates most about him.

Clint snorts, reaches for her hand so he can help her with her stretches.

“If you thought for a second that Rogers would turn his friend over for money, you’d be on another ship right now, with a bounty crew that’s actually well adjusted and known for making smart decisions. You would hate every minute of it.”

“A Captain has a duty to his crew,” she says, flatly. “We’re a group of goddamned pirates in space, half of us are wanted for something or another on probably three planets apiece, and the rest have at least one or multiple screws loose. We can’t follow someone into the abyss because of a schoolboy crush.”

“Don’t be like that,” Clint says, voice hardening out of disapproval.

“Like what?”

“A condescending asshole,” Clint says. “We already have one Loki, we don’t need another.”

Natasha looks unspeakably angry for just a moment. Clint gives her an unsympathetic look. She looks as though she’s going to retort, sharply, but then her shoulders soften.

“Fine,” she says. “Not a schoolboy crush. That doesn’t change anything.”

“Cap would take a phaser shot to the chest for any of us. He’s almost stupidly loyal,” Clint says. Natasha switches legs. He readjusts his grip around the sole of her left foot and she stretches forward. “No one wants to be on another crew, Nat, not even you.”

Natasha says nothing to that. She stretches a little farther than she means to and winces as her muscles spasm. She lets go of her foot, then leans back onto her hands, watching Clint coolly.

“Does it matter?” Clint asks her. “I don’t think any of us signed up for the job stability.”

That does make Natasha snort. It turns into a sigh.

“You think I’m being too hard on him,” she says.

“I think you’re being smart,” Clint says. He shrugs. “But the man is a natural martyr. It’s hard not to want to see him happy.”

“And if that costs us this,” she gestured around them, at the inside of their ship. “The crew, the Avenger, our lives?”

“Maybe I’m biased,” Clint says. “But you brought me here, when you said yes to him and Sam. I would have been dead in a drug den without you, so dying doing something for someone I care about doesn’t phase me that much.”

“You’re a sentimental fool,” Natasha says, but there’s a soft smile on her face.

Clint snorts.

“Now you sound like Loki.”

Natasha makes a face, kicks at his thigh.

“That is not the way to get laid,” she says.

Clint grins, tugs on her leg until she’s shifted closer. She switches positions until she’s on her knees, kneeling in front of Clint, looking down at him from above. Clint’s hands go to either side of her sweaty, bare midriff.

“I was gonna get laid?”

“Not anymore you’re not.”

Clint laughs and feels Natasha soften in his arms. He leans up to kiss her and she runs a hand through the short bristles of his hair.

“I love you,” he tells her, like he always tells her. Like he’s told her for years.

“I know,” she says, like she always says. Like she’s said for years.

“I want Cap to have that with someone,” Clint says. “A man who looks that much like a Greek god shouldn’t be so damn sad all the time.”

“I know,” Natasha sighs. “It’s unbearable.”

“You care for him,” Clint says.

“I know,” Natasha replies.

“You love him,” Clint says.

A pause, and then-- “I know.”

He leans up, finds her mouth again. They hold each other for a little while longer, bickering, laughing, and at odd intervals, kissing. Then Natasha gets to her feet, reaches down a hand to help Clint up.

“Are you going to apologize to him?” Clint asks her.

“No,” she says. It’s not unkind. He gets to his feet and she takes a hair tie off her wrist, pulls her hair back out of her face. “But I am going to find us another option.”

  
*

  
That night, Steve’s dreams are somehow worse than usual. It must be the stress of an unwinnable situation settling heavy on his shoulders, because every dream results in some form of paralysis and each time his body fails, so does his ability to save someone. First it’s Bucky, blue eyes scared, wild with betrayal, arms bound in chains, blood dripping from the corner of his mouth. Then it’s Sam with a phaser shot burned into the spot where his heart should be. Then it’s everyone in a row, Natasha and Clint, Thor and Tony, Bruce, and even Loki. Each time, Steve is responsible for their lives and each time he fails. No matter how hard he tries, he can’t move, can’t speak, and in the end, he’s paralyzed in the middle of a circle of bodies made up of his friends.

He wakes up gasping, simultaneously cold and burning through his skin like a fever he can’t shake. He kicks off his sheets and stumbles into his bathroom. The lights flicker on automatically and he grasps the edge of the sink, trying to calm his pulse and the rapid rise of bile in his throat. It takes him a moment to realize his face is wet. It takes him another moment to breathe normally again, and another to realize what he needs.  

  
When the doors to the Den slide open, he plods in silently. He doesn’t come bearing any food this time, just his own paranoia and heartache. He’s managed to wash his face, pull on sweatpants and a sweatshirt, although he’s still shivering underneath. Briefly he wonders if he’s caught something, if this new body is capable of being as sick as his old one was.

The Winter Soldier turns his head, bright blue eyes staring out at Steve. He isn’t asleep. Steve lets out a shaky breath and approaches the copper dome. He doesn’t bother with a chair this time. He lowers himself down onto the ground outside of the forcefield.

The Winter Soldier watches him cautiously for a minute before he pulls himself to a sitting position on his cot. He gets up, climbs down from his bed, sits on the floor, cross-legged, mirroring Steve’s body on the inside of the dome. He’s not wearing a shirt, but he doesn’t seem cold either. Scars wind their way across his torso, skin torn apart and ribboned back together, raised skin just a shade lighter than the rest of him. There’s plenty of scarring at his metal shoulder, but it doesn’t begin and certainly doesn’t end there. There’s a long, thick scar at his abdomen, what looks like a healed burn at the top of his flesh shoulder, two small, circular scars on his right side, and a thin, jagged one just above his groin. Steve can’t see his back, but he can imagine.

He takes in another shaky breath and when he exhales, he realizes this isn’t helping. He thought seeing Bucky would help him collect himself, the way seeing Bucky always used to settle him. But now, he’s unsettled, unstable, and seeing Bucky’s scars just reminds him how much he’s lost. He aches to touch them.

“You’re upset,” the Winter Soldier says finally, after waiting for Steve to talk.

“It’s been a long day,” Steve manages. His voice sounds as tired and ready to break as he must look and feel.

“Talk,” Bucky says.

Steve doesn’t know where to start, so he says the first thing that comes to his mind.

“I haven’t visited Ma in years,” he says. He’s surprised that this is what he thinks of, but his stomach twists and he thinks maybe he’s missing her more lately than he acknowledges. “Her ashes are floating somewhere in space, but there’s a small grave marker in a cemetery in Brooklyn. It’s next to my father’s, even though I never knew him. She would visit his grave marker and talk to him, like he could solve all of our problems. I was too young to understand why she did that, when he wasn’t even there.”

Steve’s throat burns a little and he runs a hand through his hair, looking at his other hand in his lap. Bucky’s eyes don’t leave him, although he doesn’t interrupt.  

“After she died, I did the same for her. I finally understood, I think, what it meant to her to pretend there was someone listening.”

“You miss her,” Bucky says carefully.

“Yeah,” Steve breathes out. “A lot. She was my entire world. I guess I thought I could replace her, with S.H.I.E.L.D., with the _Avenger_ , with I don’t know, a sense of purpose.”

“Have you?” Bucky’s voice sounds harsh for some reason.

Steve laughs lowly.

“How do you replace your mother?” he asks, sadly.

Bucky doesn’t say anything to that. Maybe he doesn’t understand. Steve doesn’t think he understands himself, this loneliness engulfing him. He thinks, briefly, maybe it was the safety he missed, of being small and vulnerable, but safe in Sarah Rogers’ arms.

“I don’t remember,” Bucky says slowly. “My mother. I had one.”

Steve starts at that, guiltily.

“Shit, Buck, I’m sorry--” but he’s cut off by Bucky, waving a hand dismissively.

“I remember,” Bucky says and his expression is hard, distant, as though he’s trying to think of something that is at the tip of his tongue, but that he can’t quite taste. “Someone. A girl. Short hair and blue eyes. Like mine.”

“Becca,” Steve says. “She was your sister.”

“My sister,” Bucky says, thinking about that. He levels Steve another look. “Did I have more.”

“Another sister,” Steve says, with a faint smile. “And a younger brother. Eleanor and Leo.”

Bucky looks nervous, as though that’s too much information. He licks at his lips, turns his head.

“Are they alive?”

Steve watches him guiltily. He had kept in touch with the Barnes’ family for a few years after Bucky disappeared, but then it had become too painful and Steve’s own life had spiraled rapidly out of control. Becca had sent him several messages over the last few years, but Steve had never had the heart to answer them, so guilty had he felt for losing Bucky, as though it had been his fault in the first place.

“Yeah,” Steve says.

“Oh,” Bucky says.

“They miss you,” Steve says. “They miss you every day.”

A hardened, bitter look crosses Bucky’s face. Then he throws his head back and laughs. It’s not a pleasant sound.

“They miss someone else,” he says. “I’m not him anymore.”

“Who are you?” Steve asks. “Not the asset.”

Bucky shrugs.

“You said my name is Bucky Barnes.”

“It is.”

“But I’m not him,” Bucky says. “I’m not the same.”

That hurts Steve more than he cares to think about. To have Bucky in front of him and to have him still be lost to him is something that leaves him feeling something close to bereft.

“You don’t have to be,” Steve says, finally. “You can be whatever Bucky you want.”

“Tell me something,” Bucky says. “About him.”

“Well.” Steve leans back on his hands too, mirroring Bucky, just a thin copper forcefield separating the two of them. “You had the most infuriating swoop in your hair. It’s the first thing I noticed about you. It used to be shorter than it is now. And you took so much time taking care of it, the others started hiding your hair products to piss you off.”

Bucky frowns at that.

“Sounds annoying.”

“It was,” Steve laughs. “For you. You were always well groomed, even though you didn’t come from a privileged background either. It mattered to you, how presentable you looked. Only problem was that you looked like a total asshole no matter how hard you tried.”

“Was he?” A pause. “I.”

The question takes Steve by surprise. Bucky’s looking at him with a mixture of caution and curiosity. It’s the least flat expression he’s given by miles.

“No, Buck,” Steve says. “You were anything but. You were the best guy anyone knew.”

Bucky doesn’t seem like he knows how to respond to that. He licks his chapped lips, leans back on his arms casually.

“You loved your family more than anything. Wrote them at least two or three times a week. You and Becca were best friends. Closer than any brother and sister had any right to be,” Steve says. He smiles, remembering. “You loved to read and you were always writing short stories in your free time. Some days I was too tired after training to do anything but sit on your bunk with my sketchpad. I’d draw and you’d write and the others knew better than to disturb us.”

“You draw,” Bucky says.

“I used to,” Steve says. He flexes his wrist, as though he can feel phantom cramps from hours spent drawing, years and years ago.

“Did you read it?” Bucky asks after a minute. “What he--I wrote.”

“No,” Steve says. “You never let me.”

Bucky’s breathing shallows and Steve watches him. The expression on his face is carefully blank, but Steve can see him thinking.

“I know how,” Bucky says.

Steve looks at him questioningly.

“To write,” Bucky says slowly. “And read. But it gives me a headache. Don’t think they wanted me to.”

Steve closes his eyes briefly, this makes him so sad. The Bucky he remembers loved reading in a way that few others still did when media was so easily accessible in other, more easily viewable forms. Even in the middle of S.H.I.E.L.D. training, as surrounded by friends and well-wishers as he was, he always had a book of some sort tucked away with him in case he had a moment to steal and read whatever was happening in the latest corners of the science fiction and fantasy universes. Steve wonders how else and in what other ways HYDRA had slowly dismantled the core of his best friend.

“You do that a lot,” Bucky says.

Steve opens his eyes.

“I thought I was the captive,” Bucky says. It’s so flat, so expressionless, that it takes Steve almost a full ten seconds to realize that the Winter Soldier, that Bucky, had offered him the passing hint of a very sardonic joke.

“What was it like?” Steve asks, cautiously.

At first Steve doesn’t think he’s going to answer, but then Bucky shrugs.

“Don’t remember,” he says. “Woke up and it was dark.” A pause. “When I asked too many questions, they would wipe my memory. Stopped asking questions.”

Steve’s throat dries. Bucky closes his eyes this time.

“I stopped trying to remember,” he says. “Forgot who I was.” He stops. “No. It didn’t matter anymore.”

“Do you want it back?” Steve asks.

“I don’t know,” Bucky says, opening his eyes. He frowns. “You confuse me.”

“Me?” Steve asks.

“Yes,” Bucky says. He lets his arms fall to his side, eases his way onto his back. “You want me to remember. I can tell.”

“Yeah,” Steve says. He mirrors Bucky’s body language again, lays down on the floor himself, head level with Bucky’s, feet level with his as well.

“You’re kind to me. Though it’s stupid to be,” Bucky says. “But it makes me think. I should want that too.”

Steve frowns, turns his head to look at him, to watch the profile of this man who was, and is, his best friend.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

Bucky’s quiet for a minute, then he shakes his head.

“Don’t be,” Bucky says. “It’s better than nothing.”

“What is?” Steve asks.

“Wanting something,” Bucky says. “I haven’t. In a long time.”

Steve tries to imagine that, to so deeply have his sense of self taken away that something as basic as _want_ was too dangerous to risk. It makes him feel sick, a wave of nausea washing over him.

“What should I do, Buck?” Steve asks him. It’s a dangerous question, he thinks, not only because he might listen, but because he might not. “What do you want me to do?”

The last time Steve asked this, the Winter Soldier had answered shortly, forcefully. _Do your job_ , he had said. Bucky isn’t softening, but he isn’t immediate in his answer this time.

“Not my decision,” he finally says. He turns his head to look at Steve, light blue eyes shining with unreadable, or maybe undetectable, feeling. Or maybe a lack thereof. “You’re the Captain.”

Steve sighs, looks back up at the ceiling. The forged interior of the _Avenger_ gleams down at him. Even with the lights dim, the copper dome gives off enough glow that he can see the smooth casing of the ship, criscrossed wiring and small lights beeping down at him. He never pays attention to the details of his ship, but he knows the love he feels for it, the hurtling, metal cage that he has called his home for years now. It would break his heart to say goodbye to it. It would break his heart to say goodbye to Bucky too. It seemed to him that he was destined, one way or another, to end up with a piece of himself missing.

He’s so deep in thought that he misses the subtle movement beside him. It’s only because the forcefield lets out a faint buzzing noise of discontent, glowing a little more urgently than before, that Steve looks over. Bucky has his metal hand pressed against the dome’s side. He isn’t looking at it or at Steve. But it’s not an idle gesture and it makes Steve’s heart beat a little faster, his thoughts settle into his head a little more.

“I don’t know what decision to make,” Steve says.

Bucky says nothing.

Then he says, “That’s okay.”

It shouldn’t make a difference, but it does. It’s not an answer, but it’s a sense of peace, a little offering to lean against, that Steve hasn’t had in a long time. Even after all of these years, even brainwashed, and confused out of his mind, Bucky can ease Steve’s twisting anxiety with just two words.

Steve doesn’t look at him either, watches the top of the copper dome instead.

When he presses his hand against it, at the same spot Bucky’s is resting, it gives off another disgruntled buzz, stings him a bit. But the cage is meant to keep things in, not out, so Steve’s hand slides through the copper wiring, as though it’s not there.

Steve doesn’t know if Bucky can feel his palm against his metal one, but he keeps it there anyway.

They stay like that a while, in silence, bodies stretched out and mirroring each other, palm-to-palm, through the shell of Bucky’s cage.

 

*

  
Loki has been at his console in Command for nearly 36 hours. He’s a complex and inexplicable mixture of a creature who can’t quite take anything seriously and yet takes exactly the right things too seriously. Often, unbeknownst to anyone but Thor, he sits at his console for hours at a time, unblinking, unseeing, his mind working rapidly, tossing and digging through mazes of thoughts that begin in one place and take enough twists and fall through enough holes to end up in a completely different quadrant altogether. Sometimes he won’t even notice Thor, hovering anxiously beside his brother, taking Loki’s cold hands into his own and warming them in an attempt to bring him back into his body. Thor always breathes out a sigh of relief when Loki slowly, eventually, comes back to himself. The fear is always there, hovering in the back of his mind, that one day he’ll lose Loki to his mind entirely and no amount of hovering, rubbing, or coaxing will bring him back again.

At the present time, Thor keys the code for entrance into Command. The screen of his comlog tells him it would be somewhere in the vicinity of 4 am if they were grounded on a planet. Time is relatively useless in deep space and carries even less meaning in the Negative Quadrant, which crunches through time like teeth grinding against granite rocks. What might be 4 am on Thor’s watch might actually be 8 pm on Jotunheim and noon on Midgard and a time that doesn’t even exist on Hel. Still, it’s comforting to have some measure of time for structural purposes, even if it is all meaningless.  
  
Thor muses, very briefly, about how symbolic that might be if he took some time to think about it and their lives at all. But rarely does Thor have the time or the inclination to stew deep within his thoughts. He leaves that to his stepbrother who has a distinct inability to not get sidetracked by a chasm of ideas and thinking that rarely leads to anything more than Thor trying to get Loki to pay attention to him and Loki falling silent for an hour without blinking properly.

Thor himself has been in and out of meetings with the Captain, Sam Wilson, and Natasha, with a few hours dedicated to sparring at the gym. He hasn’t seen Loki in nearly a day, which isn’t unusual, despite their being in an enclosed ship together, but he misses his brother’s presence, his sardonic humor, cryptic messages, and all. Mostly he’s antsy and thinking about taking Loki to bed. He assumes, correctly, that Loki hasn’t left his console, so he’s unsurprised to see his brother, catatonic and staring at the holographic grid in front of him.

“Brother,” Thor says cautiously.

Loki doesn’t answer him, of course. His eyes are glazed over and his fingers are hovering over his keyboard, typing in a steady stream. There’s a 3 foot by 3 foot hologram of code running next to the grid. It’s likely that if Natasha and Loki didn’t hate one another, they would have a remarkable number of things to talk about.

“Have you forgotten to eat again?” Thor asks. “Mother would be very cross.”

When Loki doesn’t answer him, again, Thor sighs. He worries when his brother is like this. Actually, Thor finds that he worries most of the time with Loki. He crosses Command to stand to Loki’s side. He puts a large arm on Loki’s thin shoulder. When his brother still does not notice him, Thor puts his other hand on Loki’s opposite shoulder and turns him toward him. Loki’s breath quickens as his hands are torn from the keyboard, his body spinning in his chair to face Thor. His eyes are still glazed over.

Thor bends down in front of him, encases Loki’s hands in his own. They’re pale and ice cold. He rubs his brother’s hands until some semblance of warmth crawls back into the long digits. Then he lifts them, presses a kiss into the palm of each, and puts them up to his cheeks.

It takes a full minute before he feels the fingers twitch and curl around his face. Loki’s breathing deepens and he lets out a little sound that sounds like _Oh._

“Thor,” Loki says, looking down at him. Loki’s eyes are blown open and it takes a while for them to settle back into a normal size and shade. “What are you doing here?”

“I have not seen you in many a day, brother,” Thor says. He covers Loki’s hands on his face with his own. “Have you not noticed?”

“No,” Loki says faintly. He blinks, trying to pull himself out of his head. “How long have I been here?”

“Bordering two days now,” Thor says. “Have you found what you were looking for?”

“No,” Loki says after a moment, considering. He licks his dry lips. His hands he leaves curled around Thor’s face. “I don’t think I did. I got lost again.”

“Where do you go when you leave us?” Thor asks gently.

“I can’t remember,” Loki says. “A place with answers.”

“You never seem to find any,” Thor says.

“I keep asking the wrong questions,” Loki answers. His expression draws into a frown and Thor leans forward, kisses him softly. Loki’s expression eases out at that, almost surprised.

“Do you wish to come to bed?” Thor asks. “You have not slept for days. The Captain will not mind. He might insist on it.”

“Yes,” Loki says. He finally lets go of Thor, stretches his undoubtedly cramped muscles. “Well, no. I have more work left to do.”

“Loki,” Thor says, disapproving.

“Maybe some coffee,” Loki says. Thor looks at Loki’s console, where there are at least six empty cups.

“Maybe some real food,” Thor says. “And sleep.”

“Coffee,” Loki insists. He stands up. Thor is about to forbid it, but then Loki offers him a hand.

Thor sighs. His brother is so often a closed, angry, unreadable person that whenever he offers these moments, private and delicate, Thor cannot say no to him. He takes his hand, gives it a squeeze, and leads him out of Command to the kitchen.

  
There’s miraculously no one in the Kitchen Bay. Thor doesn’t mind when his crewmates share spaces with him. He likes all of them a great deal, even Tony Stark, who never has anything useful to say and makes life difficult for the rest of them nearly constantly. But today he’s feeling a little quieter and a little more selfish of his time with Loki. He really did miss him.

Loki makes more coffee and Thor warms up one of the flash frozen meals for him out of stubborn insistence. Loki is curled up in one of the booths with his coffee when Thor finishes, sets the meal--gnocchi with pesto and roast vegetables, which will undoubtedly be uncomfortably chewy and marginally palatable--in front of him.

“Scoot,” he says and takes his place beside Loki once the younger man shifts over.

“What have I missed?” Loki asks. He takes a long drink of his coffee before relinquishing it after Thor glowers at him.

“One of the engines nearly stopped working and Tony Stark managed to fix it temporarily,” Thor says. “We are running low on food, tensions are running high, and I believe the Captain and Natasha Romanoff are fighting.”

“Hm,” Loki says lightly. He spears one of the pieces of gnocchi and delicately takes a bite into it. Thor is uncertain how he manages to do so, given how small the piece is to begin with. Thor could easily eat five pieces at one time.

“Are we going to fall out of the sky?” Thor asks, watching him.

“That is not how physics works,” Loki says and finishes the piece. “If the engines stop working, we will float through space until we are captured in the orbit of another planet or by the gravity of a black hole. If they fail in the Negative Quadrant, well, I suppose we shall live here until we die, unless another ship pulls in at precisely the location we are floating.”

Thor frowns.

“But that is unlikely and the chances they will not be an enemy ship at this point are,” Loki pauses. “Slim.”

“We still have power,” Thor insists. His eyebrows furrow in confusion. “We are not cloaked.”

“It isn’t the power,” Loki dismisses. “Nor the fuel. It is the propulsion. Without functioning engines we are at the mercy of basic astrophysics.”

Thor’s head hurts just thinking about it. He reaches forward and plucks a questionably herbed potato from Loki’s dish.

“No,” Loki says. “For better or worse our actual danger is that the engines will fail and the power will shut down thereafter. And we will lose the oxygen turbines and suffocate in our own carbon monoxide.”

Thor pauses mid-chew. Loki eats another piece of gnocchi, almost cheerfully.

“It is not the worst way to go,” he says. “I hear it is like a massive migraine and then you simply go to sleep and do not wake up.”

“You are always such a delight to speak to, brother,” Thor mutters.

“Oh you know what they say,” Loki says brightly. “Loki, Prince of Good Cheer.”

Thor snorts at that, takes Loki’s cup of coffee and drinks some himself.

“No one says that,” Thor says.

“Well, no,” Loki says. “But it would not hurt them to.”

Thor laughs, shaking his head. Loki leans into his shoulder and Thor tries not to feel lightheaded. The warmth in the pit of his stomach isn’t unwelcome or even unfamiliar. He’s carried it with him for longer than he can remember. He thinks if he ever let Loki know the true depths of his feelings, just how much he adores him and revolves around him, Loki would disappear faster than light into the pull of a black hole. Thor is careful about his affections and pronouncements for this very reason.

“Tell me,” Thor says instead. He loops an arm around Loki’s shoulder.  “What you have been thinking of.”

“The meaning of life,” Loki says, completely serious. He shifts closer, lets Thor run his fingers through his hair. “Specifically where it comes from and where it goes once we are gone.”

“I did not know you had become spiritual, Loki,” Thor says.

Loki snorts.

“It is not so surprising or distasteful,” he says. “Whether you believe in a God, in Yggdrasil, or in the very rationality of your mind, it is only natural to assume something that is here came from somewhere. Matter is not created in a vacuum. That, too, is physics. Well. Chemistry.”

“So?” Thor asks.

“So,” Loki says. “If mass is constant and we can neither be created nor destroyed, from where did we reach the level of constancy? There was nothing there and now there is. I seek to find the source of it all.”

It’s Thor’s turn to snort. He scratches lightly at Loki’s scalp and Loki lets out a soft little gasp, pleased.

“And what will you do with that information, once you have found it?”

“I do not know,” Loki says, after a moment. His eyes, which had fallen closed, open. They’re bright green in the light of the kitchen and watch Thor at the same time they watch something else entirely, maybe an entirely different universe. “Why does one seek knowledge? Must there always be an end goal?”

“For others, no. For you? Always,” Thor says. His hand moves down to Loki’s neck. “Usually your end goal is chaos.”

“Ah,” Loki breathes out. Then he smiles. “No, you misunderstand me entirely. My end goal is not chaos. Chaos is simply the easiest way to get there.”

Thor, strictly speaking, does not think that is true. But Loki is almost pliant in his arms now, melting into his touch, and if he does not finish his gnocchi soon, Thor does not think he will be given another chance to do so before he hastily drags Loki into their quarters.

“Finish your dinner,” Thor manages, because he is a Good Older Brother and an Even Better Influence.

Loki picks at the gnocchi, offers Thor a piece. It is, unsurprisingly, uncomfortably chewy and vaguely inedible. Thor eats the majority of it anyway, while Loki finishes two more cups of coffee and eats the roasted vegetables. Ever the contradiction, Loki had decided at the tender age of five that he was no longer going to partake in eating animals, and has been a staunch vegetarian ever since. Thor snorts every time he remembers it, compares Loki’s devotion to animals to his relative lack of compassion for humans and other extraterrestrial lifeforms. 

They mostly talk about the ship, their childhoods, whatever book Loki is now reading. Thor likes these moments together, when they’re somewhere in between siblings and lovers, maybe almost friends. Loki is never fully open with him, or with anyone, but in these moments, he comes closest, as though he is a full person Thor could get to know and not just an endless array of puzzles.

“Yggdrasil,” Thor says, once Loki finishes his vegetables.

“Hm?” Loki puts down his fork, reaches for his coffee.

“I know you, Loki,” Thor says. “You do not believe in any deity and you are too...superstitious to only believe in the rationality of your mind. That leaves only Yggdrasil.”

Loki stiffens, almost imperceptibly, although he’s in Thor’s arms and Thor, as attuned as he is to his brother, obviously notices.

“Yggdrasil is a planetary alignment, Thor,” Loki says. “It is not a system of belief.”

“Yggdrasil is a source of life,” Thor says. “I did pay attention to my tutors.”

“Huh. The universe offers new surprises every day,” Loki replies, likely just to be a dick.

“Whether that manifests in--” Thor waves a hand in the air. “--a planetary alignment or something else is no matter. You believe in him. It.”

Loki pauses.

“And?”

“What are you planning?” Thor asks bluntly.

“Why, brother,” Loki says. He takes his coffee mug back from Thor. “I am far too busy to be scheming these days.”

Thor lets out a puff of unamused laughter.

“There is not enough distraction in the world to keep you from scheming, Loki,” Thor says.

Loki raises the mug to his mouth, drains the rest of the now-lukewarm coffee. Winces shortly thereafter.

“Tell me,” Loki says, lightly. “How is Odin?”

Thor is not like Loki. Where Loki wears his mask carefully, with precision, Thor can barely hide even his more subtle feelings and thoughts. He blanches without meaning to.

“He is fi--”

“Do not lie to me, Thor,” Loki says. He puts his cup down. He’s angry, eyes flashing. “It does not take a genius to know you are hiding something from me. And unfortunately for you, I am. A genius.”

Thor doesn’t say anything.

“There has been no chatter out of Asgard, but no matter. I can read you like a book,” Loki says. “And you have not complained about Odin in weeks. Or witlessly tried to reconcile my excuse for a relationship with him. Which likely means something has happened to him. You do not want to tell me. I cannot force you to.”

“Loki,” Thor starts, but Loki cuts him off. Shakes off his arm.

“Do not ask me about Yggdrasil,” Loki snaps. “And I will not ask you about Odin.”

He stands up, gathers his dirty plate and mug, carries them both to the Sanitation Receptacle. He’s nearly out the door, on his way back to Command, when Thor catches up to him, a hand at his wrist.

“Do not be angry,” Thor says. “Please.”

Thor is tired of Loki being angry with him. He is tired of all of the anger on the ship in general. He must wear his distress clearly on his face because Loki softens, just slightly, although he still looks generally displeased.

“Leave me to my own affairs, Thor,” Loki says.

“Fine,” Thor agrees. He moves his hand to Loki’s shoulder. “Fine.”

Loki is wound like an angry cat, but even cats eventually respond to affection when they desire it. Thor’s hand moves to his neck and Loki lets out a tight, frustrated breath.

“Come back to our quarters,” Thor says, moving closer. “You have been gone too long and I have missed you.”

At first Thor thinks he’s going to refuse, that Loki is going to flee back to his grids and codes, just as he always does when he becomes too uncomfortable with any given situation. But this time, he doesn’t. This time, he nods slightly.

Thor leans down, thumb rubbing a circle into the back of Loki’s neck. Loki’s fingers curl into Thor’s lengthening hair as they kiss. It’s cautious at first, wary. Then Loki opens his mouth and lets Thor in, Thor deepening the kiss, his other hand going to the small of Loki’s back. He crowds Loki until Loki’s back hits the door. They bite at one another’s lips, kiss growing almost frantic. Thor is about to shift his hand to lift Loki up so that Loki can wrap his legs around Thor’s waist. But then, dimly, he hears voices drift to him from a quarter close by.

“Take me,” Loki whispers lowly against his lips, nipping at the bottom one, and Thor nearly groans out loud. Instead, reluctantly, he lets Loki go. He moves away and Loki stops him, fingers to his wrist. Surely he can feel it, the hammering of Thor’s pulse in his bloodline.

Thor leads him, fingers laced together, through the hallway, back to their quarters.

They do not come back out for a while.

  
*

  
He dreams deeply that night, for the first time in a long time. He can’t tell what it is at the time--a dream or a memory or a twisted, yearning version of reality altogether.

  
  
It’s ten days before graduation from basic training. In exactly fifteen days, Steve will be joining the Strike Force Command units, going through a round of intelligence training, while Bucky will be joining the Strike Force Combat units, receiving Special Operatives training because he’s done so well during basic training he’s earned high commendations across the board.

“Isn’t it annoying?” Steve stares at him accusingly, once. “Being good at everything?”

Bucky laughs at that, almost nervously.

“Hardly,” he says. “I’m just a good shot. They need a guy to pinpoint the enemy and fire a sniper rifle to an alien’s throat and I just happen to be the asshole who can do it best.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Steve says, patting him comfortingly on his cheek. “We haven’t been at war with the aliens for a good two centuries.”

Bucky rolls his eyes.

“And don’t call my best friend an asshole,” Steve says. “Only I can do that.”

Bucky rolls his eyes again, but can’t help smiling.

  
That spark, that ferocious, single-minded spirit lasted only so long as Steve was feeling well. He had been doing such a good job of it too. Then, ten days before graduation, he comes down with something. It’s not pneumonia, miraculously. It is, however, a particularly awful strain of the flu. He looks pale during morning simulations and by evening meal he’s doing a poor job of suppressing coughs that shake his body and sneezes that make his eyes sting with water. He takes his usual seat next to Bucky, but he’s quieter and somehow, impossibly, smaller.

“Steve,” Bucky says with a deep frown.

“It’s nothing,” Steve says. His tray is nearly empty. He’s managed to get a bowl of soup, some crackers, and a small mug of tea.

“That all you’re gonna eat?” Bucky asks instead.

“Not hungry,” Steve shrugs. He can barely lift his shoulder and he slumps close to Bucky after the attempt. He tries to straighten himself, but he can’t seem to. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Bucky says. He abandons the piece of broccoli he was spearing to put an arm around Steve’s back, supporting him.

“I’m fine,” Steve complains, not that he manages to shrug Bucky off.

Bucky can feel the trembling under his arm, which marks Steve as distinctly Not Fine.

Morita and Gabe Jones settle into their usual seats across from them, both with anxious looks on their faces. Steve focuses on his tea, lifting it to his mouth. He looks queasy, as though the thought of eating or drinking anything is too much for him to bear.

 _Is he okay?_ Bucky mouths at Morita and Gabe while Steve is distracted.

Both of them give him tight, worried shakes of the head. They're all in the same regiment and the two of them had watched Steve struggle through the entirety of the morning.

“I’m tired, not stupid, you guys,” Steve mutters. “I can still see you.”

Bucky ignores him, reaches his other hand over to press the back of his hand against Steve’s forehead. Steve freezes slightly beneath him and Bucky hisses. Steve’s skin is so hot it nearly burns his hand.

“ _Rogers_ ,” Bucky starts and Steve tries to shove him away. He almost manages, except he starts sneezing roughly and the sneezes trigger violent coughing almost immediately thereafter. His already too-thin frame starts shaking and his mug tumbles out of his hand, crashes to the table, hot tea spilling everywhere.

“ _Shit_ ,” Steve manages in between another coughing fit, his voice raw with pain.

Bucky’s heart is in his throat, he’s so worried. He helps Steve up while Morita and Gabe scramble for napkins, rubbing his back slowly, trying to calm the coughing, but not knowing what, if anything, is going to help. It takes nearly one painful, horrifying minute for Steve’s coughs to subside. By this time most of the Dining Tent is looking at them and one of the Sergeants on duty is standing, ready to contact Medical on her comlog.

“Come on,” Bucky mutters. He tosses a look at Gabe and Morita, who wave them away, helping clean up the mess Steve’s created.

“I’m _okay_ ,” Steve tries to insist, but he must feel truly awful, because his voice is hoarse and sounds like he’s only barely holding back tears.

Bucky manages to get him out of the tent anyway, across the grounds, to the concerned and surreptitious looks from the other trainees milling outside, waiting for their evening meal shift. His arm is clamped tightly around Steve’s back and Steve is so small he not only fits neatly into Bucky’s side, but leaves much room besides. Steve stumbles, breathing harshly, suppressing coughs and shaking from cold while simultaneously sweating.

“If you die,” Bucky says as they finally reach Steve’s tent, “I’m going to kill you.”

Steve sneezes miserably.

Bucky just gets him past the threshold of the tent when Steve gives a shudder.

“My head,” Steve says lowly. He swallows and Bucky can tell it’s dry. He’s blinking rapidly, stops with a hand against Bucky’s stomach.

“Steve,” Bucky breathes.

“Is the room spinning?” Steve asks slowly. “For. You too?”

Bucky barely has time to give an alarmed answer before Steve sways on his feet.

It’s lucky Bucky’s holding Steve up anyway because he catches him before he falls.

  
Steve is moved almost immediately to the Medical Tent and the medics come in and out from his quarter for the rest of the evening, all night, and throughout much of the next two days. They take Steve’s temperature once an hour, attach him to a cool cylinder through wiring that pulses the tips of his fingers with moisture. It’s supposed to keep him hydrated, although he’s so pale and intermittently sweaty that Bucky is never sure it’s actually doing its job. Once every five hours, a Resident Med gently brushes Steve’s mouth open, and tips a tablet in. It dissolves upon impact and, at least for a little while thereafter, Steve seems to breathe slightly better. He’s unconscious the entire time and Bucky sits by his bedside, gnawing at his fingernails, wanting to reach out and touch his friend’s hand, but not actually doing it.

“Soldier,” Medic says in slight admonishment when she finds Bucky dozing off in the chair next to Steve.

“I’m not leaving him,” Bucky says and by this point he’s been with Steve long enough that he’s willing to use contagion as an excuse if they try to kick him out.

Medic looks like she’s going to say something, but Bucky scrubs his hands over his face and must look so exhausted and miserable that she just sighs instead, brushes her blonde hair out of her face and leaves. Later, a Resident Med brings a cot into the quarter. He leaves after giving Steve his medicine, clapping Bucky on the shoulder sympathetically. Bucky curls up on the cot and falls asleep to the soft sound of Steve’s breathing.

  
Fury comes and visits the next day and Bucky’s so clearly out of his mind with anxiety and worry that Fury doesn’t even comment on the cot or the fact that he hasn’t left Steve’s side, that this is a blatant violation of the curfew and rooming requirements.

“He’s going to get better, sir,” Bucky says, standing for Fury when he walks in. He looks tired and sounds determined. Feels something a little thinner, more stretched out, than that, underneath. Fury’s one eye gazes at him and then at Steve. His mouth stretches into a thin line and Bucky doesn’t know Fury that well, but the tenseness in his shoulders is hard to miss. He, too, is worried. Steve does that to people.

“I know, soldier,” is all Fury says.

He stays for a half an hour and neither he nor Bucky say anything to each other. Instead, they watch the slow rise and fall of Steve’s chest and once, when he takes in a deep rattling breath, they both start to move. He settles soon thereafter and they sit back down. Bucky looks down at his hands and Fury grunts in concerned frustration.

“Was it a mistake?” Fury asks, just once, watching Steve.

The question isn’t meant for Bucky and he’s not sure he knows exactly what Fury means, but he thinks he does. It’s selfish, but he thinks of how the worst experience of his life led to him meeting the best person he’s ever known and yes, it came about in the most ludicrous manner possible, but having known Steve for a while now, Bucky’s aware that it could not have happened in any other manner and still held the same meaning for both of them.

“No,” Bucky says. “And pardon me sir, but he’d be real mad for you suggesting it.”

Fury’s lip twitches at the corner, but he doesn’t say anything further.

He takes his leave with an acknowledging nod and Bucky’s left with his best friend, not knowing if he’ll live or die, but knowing, somehow, even now, that everything in his own life hinges on the answer.

  
Bucky doesn’t return to training the next day or the day after and Dum Dum tells him, later, that Fury had excused him from the next few days of training, much to Pierce’s distinct displeasure.

  
Bucky doesn’t leave Steve’s side except to wash up. Dum Dum brings him clothes to sleep in and Morita and Gabe bring him food from meals that Bucky picks at. He’s never been very good at eating when anxiety is suppressing his appetite. He supposes that’s why he’s never gained that much girth, despite his eating and training, because unbeknownst to most of the others, Bucky actually has quite a bit of anxiety quite a lot of the time. It doesn’t help that he’s had so many people in his life who have been sick and that there's never been anything he could do to help them.

“He’s doing better,” Medic says, with a faint smile. She’s tall and thin, blonde hair brushing her shoulders and a sharp nose that peeks out of an otherwise kind face. She’s an officer’s niece, somehow, through one of those families with aunts and nieces who differ by years and not decades. He learns all of this as she takes Steve’s vitals, adjusts his Hydrotank, and wets a washcloth that she hands to Bucky.

“He’s too stubborn to do any worse,” Bucky mutters. He takes the washcloth, scoots close to Steve, replaces the dry one on his forehead.

“You should go back to your tent, soldier,” Medic says, after keying Steve’s vitals into her holopad. “You’re not going to do him any good if you get sick too.”

“I’m not doing anyone any good anyway,” Bucky says stubbornly, with a one-shoulder shrug. “Might as well be here for him so he doesn’t wake up alone. He gets cranky when he thinks he’s been abandoned. I'd never hear the end of it.”

Medic looks at the two of them in amusement. Then she gestures between them.

“Are you two?” Leaving the obvious unsaid.

Bucky flushes.

“No,” he says.  
  
Not because he doesn’t want to, he doesn’t say. Mostly because Steve hated him until a few months ago and that’s some kinda way to break the peace, by taking advantage of Steve’s friendship by admitting he’s been thinking about kissing him since the moment they met.

   
Steve’s fever spikes again that evening, despite Medic giving him more tablets, despite all of the hydration, and temp stabilizing photon shots. He still hasn’t woken up, has been in a bleary, fitful sleep for two days at this point. Medic tells Bucky this is normal, that the medication Steve is under helps induce long-lasting periods of sleep so that the patient’s body can recover. It’s a form of medically induced, short-term stasis, she explains, not unlike cryogenically freezing someone only, well, without the freezing. The impact on the body is the same, except it allows room for growth and healing.

It all sounds distant to Bucky’s ear, a bunch of futuristic medical bullshit to cover the fact that Medic doesn’t know why Steve isn’t responding to medication properly and doesn’t know what to do about it. Bucky’s angry, all the time. He sits beside Steve, reaches out to hold his hand, then pulls back, shaking with stress and anger. They live here, in the future, during a time when degenerative diseases can be reversed and the recovery rate from cancer and AIDS is in the lower 90s, and the goddamned Medical unit can’t even cure a boy who has the flu.

“I’m gonna be so mad,” Bucky mutters to Steve, glaring at his pale, blond head. “If you die on me, Rogers. You’re a real pain in my ass, you know that?”

Steve doesn’t reply, of course, so Bucky spends the next hour imagining what sarcastic retorts he’d be making if he was conscious.

  
At some point, something starts beeping. It nearly makes Bucky jump out of his skin with panic. A Resident Med comes and checks the equipment, frowning, and takes notes.

 _Fuck it_ , Bucky thinks, and reaches out, takes Steve’s hand between his own, tries to rub warmth into them and fails.

  
It’s sometime past midnight when Bucky, wide awake, despite knowing he needs to return to training the next morning, notices that Steve seems to be sweating. Usually this would be cause for concern, but somewhere in Bucky’s exhaustion-addled mind, he remembers that one sign that a fever has broken is that the person starts sweating. He leans forward, takes his free hand and brushes his fingertips into Steve’s hair. He pushes back sweaty blond strands, lowers his mouth to Steve’s forehead and brushes a kiss onto it, gently.

He hears a very, very soft inhale of breath and feels, rather than sees, a shift in Steve’s awareness. When he pulls away, Steve’s looking at him through blurry, feverish eyes.

“Oh,” Bucky says, his heart jumping to his throat. “Oh, Steve.”

Steve doesn’t say anything for a moment, seeming utterly confused and helplessly lost. He blinks multiple times and his breathing picks up and then drops, evening. He opens his mouth and closes it. Then he licks his lips and closes his eyes again.

It’s the most movement Bucky’s seen from his best friend in days and something like repressed anxiety washes over Bucky then, an overwhelming relief that Steve, in his deep sleep, hasn’t died. He nearly shakes with it, the relief.

“Water,” Steve rasps, voice dry with disuse.

Bucky drops Steve’s hand, stumbles to his bedside table, fills a glass with water from the jug, and takes it to Steve’s bed. He rethinks this, returns to the table, and picks up a straw.

He sits gingerly at the edge of the bed, holding the straw to Steve’s mouth. He doesn’t say anything as Steve sips through it, tentatively at first, and then more forcefully, like a man dying of thirst. It isn’t until Steve finishes and he pulls the glass away that Bucky realizes that he is actually shaking.  

“Hey,” Bucky manages, softly. He doesn’t want to startle him. Doesn’t know if Steve remembers anything.

“Told you,” Steve exhales, hoarsely. “‘m fine.”

And Bucky could kill him then, stupid, stubborn, obnoxious Steve Rogers, who doesn’t know how to stop wearing himself thin, even when it’s killing him.

“You’re a goddamned menace,” Bucky says, with only a little bit of heat.

Steve tries to smile, some semblance of it, but it only shows up as a dim, bland grimace. Bucky grasps his hand again, unthinkingly, glowers at him.

Steve looks at their hands, clasped together, and raises an eyebrow, minutely. Bucky glares again, daring Steve to say anything about it.

“How long?” he says instead.

“Two days,” Bucky says. “And some change. I thought you were gonna die, asshole.”

Steve almost manages a smile this time.

“Couldn’t,” Steve says. “You said. You were gonna kill me. If I did.”

Oh sure, Bucky thinks, he remembers that.

“Jesus,” he says instead. “You’re some kinda work, Rogers.”

Steve makes a noncomittal noise, closes his eyes again. It’s too soon for color to be returning to his face, but Bucky thinks he can see it, some life creeping back to the surface.

“You should rest,” Bucky whispers. “I’ll go back to my tent. Let you sleep.”

Steve’s eyes flutter open again, a frown pressing into his features.

“You wanna leave?”

“No,” Bucky says slowly. “I mean. I don’t have to. But if you’re feeling better.”

Steve’s frown deepens. He’s silent for almost a full minute. Bucky feels the awkwardness settle around them and he tries to drop Steve’s hand, tries to stand up. Then, abruptly, Steve’s fingers tighten around Bucky’s.

“Don’t,” Steve says in a small voice. “Please stay.”

Bucky feels his cheeks heat, a warmth settling comfortably into his chest.

“I’m sorry,” Steve breathes out. “I just. Want company.” He closes his eyes. “I’m always alone in the hospital. I hate it.”

Bucky knows Steve’s been through a lot. He knows he’s always been sickly, that he’s often in the hospital, that he lost his mother when he was too young and has had no one to look after him since. He tries to imagine Steve, dwarfed in ill-fitting hospital bed clothes, attached to chrome-colored medical apparatuses, alone and scared, but with no other option than to put on a brave face and weather through the pain. It’s enough to break his goddamned heart.

“Hey,” Bucky says soothingly. He folds his hands around Steve’s again, takes a seat next to him, on the bed this time. “Hey. Okay, Stevie. I’m not gonna leave you.”

He brings Steve’s hand up and kisses his palm. Then he kisses Steve’s knuckles and then his wrist.         

“Thanks,” Steve says quietly, after a moment. His eyes are closed again and he doesn’t show it, but his voice sounds watery.

Bucky sits with him until Steve dozes off and his own eyes start closing. 

  
When Bucky wakes up the next morning, he’s fallen asleep next to Steve, on the bed, Steve’s nose in Bucky’s hair, Bucky’s arm curled around Steve protectively, and someone has pulled the blankets up around them both.

  
  
The Winter Soldier opens his eyes and he’s lying on his side, arm curled, as though he’s guarding something. He can’t remember the last time he had dreamt and, frankly, he doesn’t want to. Still, he thinks this dream, whatever it was, was a good one. A little sad, but nice too, as though he, in another life, could have been happy.

“Stevie,” he says out loud, although he’s not sure why or who it belongs to.

Well, no. That’s not right. He knows exactly who it belongs to, if not exactly why, and it’s so beyond the realm of acceptable that he doesn’t allow himself to think about it, rejects it out of hand.

The door behind him slides open with a soft sigh and he can smell him, the distinct and now familiar smell of soap, cologne, and just a hint of sweat. He moves at the same pace, in the same rhythm, even though the Winter Soldier had warned him, had told him he was identifiable because he was easy to recognize. He hadn’t listened, of course. He had turned out to be extremely stubborn.

“Hey,” Captain Steve Rogers says to his back. “You awake?”

The Winter Soldier thinks about ignoring him, then. He thinks about closing his eyes and going back to sleep, lying and telling him he doesn’t remember anything at all, that he's done talking, that he wants to end all communications until he’s handed over to IPGS. He surprises himself at how strongly he dislikes the idea. He doesn’t want Steve Rogers to leave. He might even like having him there.

Instead, Bucky turns over, watches Steve approach him with a tray of food. Cautious, but optimistic. Tired, but happy, in some subtle, unspeaking, undetectable way. Their eyes lock and Steve, almost unbearably, brightens. It almost makes the Winter Soldier angry.

“Yes,” Bucky says. He almost sighs.

  
*

  
Clint is in Command, playing a 3D Sim of an out-of-fashion Midgardian game called “Battlestar Galaxy” on his holopad. There are two players in Jotunheim, a player on Asgard, and one from Vanaheim who join him for weekly rounds as part of a gaming group named after some Asgardian lore that Clint doesn’t really understand and can’t really pronounce, but agreed to because it sounded pretty cool. Natasha’s made fun of him for his interplanetary, cyber nerd friends multiple times and, admittedly, Battlestar is a game most children pick up at the age of ten and stop playing by the age of fifteen, but there are other multiplayer questing games they convene for, time lag permitting, and anyway, it passes time when the _Avenger_ is churning through space slowly. Matching up time zones when one party is stuck in the Negative Quadrant is nearly impossible, but Clint manages to find a time to join the other three and that time happens to be now.

He watches one of the others make a move while also eyeing the grid blinking above Loki’s console. He’s been in Command long enough that his muscles are stiff and their group has been through three rounds of the game. In the entire time, the grid has been empty, just a 3D projection of negative space and the _Avenger_ a yellow dot blipping along it.

Clint blinks and looks forward onto his game projection, says something biting into his microphone for it to be translated to Jotun, when something starts beeping, urgently. At first he thinks it’s his own holopad malfunctioning. Then he looks over at the grid.

It takes him a few seconds to process what he’s seeing.

“Holy shit,” he breathes out. “Fuck. Fuck. _Fuck._ ”

It can’t be possible. But unless he’s developed some strange eye disease in the past twenty seconds, there’s no denying what’s appearing on the grid at frightening speed. He scrambles up from his seat, jams the comms button linked to the entire ship.

“ _Cap. Loki. To Command. We have tails_ ,” Clint yells into the microphone. The grid starts spinning from all angles, trying to show Clint the intruders, red dots popping up along all of the planes, thousands of miles from _The_ _Avenger_ , but in droves, surrounding the starship, boxing it in mercilessly. “ _A squadron of tails. There’s a fuckload of them._ ”

There’s a static burst of silence before five different voices come back to him along the comms.

“ _What_.”

“ _Shit._ ”

“ _Are you sure?_ ”

“ _Fuck!_ ”

And, from Loki, “ _I am sleeping, try again later_.”

  
“There’s no way this is possible,” Sam’s face is pale behind Steve. It shouldn’t be possible, is the thing. For them to have been surrounded by dead space for the entirety of their time in the Quadrant and for the tails to appear so suddenly, so immediately, within thousands of miles, yes, but that was barely any distance at all in space and particularly unpredictable in the Negative Quadrant, where space, time, and distance didn’t follow rules so much as chew and spit them back out. “They weren’t there before. We’ve been scanning this sector for _days_.”

“That is the nature of cloaking,” Loki snaps. He’s at his console, rapidly typing code into the screen projected next to the grid. He’s managed to put on clothes hastily, although his collar is still askew, in a distinctly un-Loki-like manner. He has the grid projected in five different places around Command, enhanced so that one of the grids is large enough for Clint to be standing in the middle of. “If you are detectable, it defeats the _purpose_ of the device.”

Command is packed, only Bruce missing because it’s his afternoon napping shift and he’s dead to the world when he’s sleeping, even through the blare of communications.

“The chance of entire squadrons appearing cloaked in the same space in the Quadrant as we are is,” Steve frowns deeply.

“It isn’t chance,” Loki says. “They have been following us and we have been deeply careless.”

“We should have been cloaked,” Sam says uneasily.

“We don’t have enough fuel or power or money, remember?” Natasha says sharply, pointedly.

“I thought we had that cloak reader,” Steve says, prickled, but ignoring her. He feels distinctly panicked, but also clear-headed, the adrenaline and danger of the moment reinvigorating him as much as it’s making him feel ill. “The one Tony installed.”

“It has a margin of error,” Tony says. He’s standing next to one of the projections, this one enhanced on a clump of red dots two thousand miles, whatever that means in the Negative Quadrant, to their South.

“Of multiple squadrons of tails?” Clint asks.

“Don’t blame me for the unpredictability of the Quadrant,” Tony snaps.

“Are you even _good_ at your job?” Clint asks and Tony turns toward him, fists clenched.

“Everyone shut up,” Steve commands, heading off the predictable bickering of his crew before it starts. “How much time do we have before the first impact, Loki?”

“I can tell you an estimate, Captain,” Loki says dryly. “But I cannot tell you if the Quadrant will agree.”

Steve curses out loud. The Quadrant was always going to be a risk. What was _The_ _Avenger_ without taking stupid risks that always, inevitably, ended poorly for them?

“There’s at least a dozen ships in each of these clusters,” Natasha murmurs, looking forward at the grid in front of Loki. “There’s no random, rogue force that could muster these numbers. Unless they’re unrelated, coincidental.”

“You don’t believe in coincidences,” Clint says.

“And I don’t believe these are random tails. These aren’t other bounty hunters,” she says. She expands each of the clusters, takes a closer look at each of them, then turns on her heels, sits swiftly at her own console. She pulls up a code screen, much like Loki’s. “There was nothing on the Underground as of an hour ago, unless my bulletins have been overridden.”

“Is that,” Sam blinks, “a possibility?”

“I’m not the only hacker in the Nine Galaxies, Wilson,” Natasha says. Her eyes are trained on the codes she types in, her red hair tied back. Her voice is calm, but there’s clear tension in the lines of her shoulders.

“But you’re the best,” he points out.

“Best doesn’t mean infallible,” Natasha says, so tersely that Sam falls back, shoots Clint a worried look. Clint gives him a brief, sharp shake of his head and Sam shuffles over to Steve.  

“What’s the estimate, Loki?” Steve asks.

“Five hours, give or take five hours,” Loki replies.

It’s not a helpful answer, but Steve knows that, for once, it isn’t Loki’s fault. The Quadrant is nearly as unpredictable as Loki mentioned it was. It’s a hard, dense space to churn through, but there are pockets of space, similar to wormholes or lighter blackholes, unidentifiable pieces of space that eat time and distance. Unofficially called Wobbles, if any of the squadrons fall through one of these pieces, there’s every possibility that they will end up within miles of _The_ _Avenger_ , if not colliding directly into it. This unpredictability and risk is what makes the Quadrant as dangerous and unpopular as it is. Ships that end up in the Quadrant do so out of necessity or because they’re manned by adrenaline junkies with no sense of self preservation, which.

“Give me the actual percentages,” Steve says. Despite the chaos of the situation, he’s starting to feel more in control than he’s felt in months, perhaps in the past year altogether. “I know you’ve mapped out every portion we’ve traveled through and I know you know more besides. There’s nothing you don’t prepare for.”

Loki pauses before answering. Even Natasha stops keying in her rapid typing to the Underground networks to look up at him. Next to Loki, Thor tenses.

“There is a 35% chance one of the squadrons hits a Wobble and ends up within a twenty mile radius of the ship,” Loki says. Steve clenches his teeth so hard he can feel a headache begin near the corner of his vision. “There is a 15% chance there are other, cloaked squadrons closer to us than we realize. We did not detect them through the Stark reader. They uncloaked on purpose, either to fire on us or because they, too, are running out of fuel and power.”

Cloaking was a technique that helped many ships slide through undetected in deep space, but the device deactivated the moment a ship prepared to engage in conflict.

“And if they fire on us from where they are?” Steve asks.

Loki thinks about this for a moment. The silence in Command is so dense, the tension so thick, Steve can almost taste it on his tongue.

“Accounting for any Wobbles that swallow their fire, if we continue at the course we are headed, impact will be in little under two hours.”

Steve swears again, loudly.

“We can’t change course now,” Sam says. “We either crash out of the Quadrant, lose time we can’t account for, or hit another cloaked squadron. Or a Wobble. Fuck.”

“How much power do we have?” Steve turns to Tony. “Can we handle a fire fight?”

“Are you kidding?” Tony looks at Steve, mouth agape. “Cap, we’re barely coasting through the Quadrant right now. It would take all the power we have to ready our guns. Our engines are almost run down, at least one of the turbines are close to quitting, and one hit from the goon squad and we’re done. We need to exit this space and _now_.”

Steve is about to answer, when a series of beeping stops him.

The crew of _The_ _Avenger_ looks around them all in horror.

What was a cluster of squadrons to three sides of them have now multiplied.

“Holy fuck,” Clint breathes out.

“That’s not a couple of squadrons,” Sam says. “That’s a motherfucking _fleet_.”

“S.H.I.E.L.D. came for us,” Steve breathes out, confused, angry, perplexed, and then, before he can say anything more, Thor turns to him.

“Captain,” Thor says. “There is a message for you.”

At almost the same time Loki says, “Ah. I was wrong. Impact time is T minus 30 minutes.”

And then, because all bad things happens in threes, everyone hears Natasha start to swear in Russian.

“We’ve been compromised,” she says. “My entire grid’s been hacked.”

Natasha turns to Steve, all ire and disagreement forgotten. She’s paler than Steve has ever seen her, a ghost under fiery red hair.

“Cap,” Natasha says. “They’re overrunning the system.”

“The system,” Steve says, slowly.

“The entire system,” Natasha says. “Whoever they are, they’re going to take _The_ _Avenger_.”

  
Steve’s ears are ringing. He can hear the tinny sound, louder than it should be, drowning out the noise around him, the frantic shuffling, the squabbling, the pure panic from his crewmates. It’s only when he grips the armrests on his Command seat so hard that they break under his grip that he realizes everyone is looking at him. And that it’s actually dead silent.

“Steve,” Natasha says. She’s bent slightly in front of him, her face level with his own. Her hand is on his jaw and it’s only when he processes her touch that he unclenches his jaw. “Take a breath, Captain. We need you.”

“If I turn off the gravity, that’ll conserve just enough to get us through the exit,” Tony says suddenly. He’s been studying the grid and now he straightens. He turns toward Steve. “Everyone will have to strap in and any imminent collision will turn you into a human pinball if you somehow get loose, but I can do it. At your word, Cap.”

Steve takes a breath in through his mouth and exhales slowly through his nose, willing his blood pressure down. His head clears.

“Tony go,” he says. “Do it on my command.”

Tony quickly takes his leave.

“Natasha, how much time?”

“We have control of most of the central accesses,” she says. “I can hold them off for half an hour. An hour if Loki--”

“Loki isn’t a hacker,” Steve frowns.

Natasha turns her gaze on the Jotun.

“You didn’t tell him.”

“He did not ask,” Loki shrugs lightly. “I thought it rather obvious.”

“I don’t have the time,” Steve says. “Loki, do whatever Natasha tells you to do. Clint, you take over monitoring the grids. Prepare for exit. Thor, the message.”

“This is a bad idea,” Loki says mildly as Natasha snaps at him, “Shut up and throw up as many walls as you can.”

Thor taps something at his console and a file blips up at Steve’s own. He presses play.

There’s the familiar two second lag and then an image appears before him. It isn’t a person, as he expected, but a logo of some sort. A menacing red skull with six tentacles protruding from underneath, encased in a red circles and set against a background of black. Steve doesn’t know what it is, but it sends chills down his spine. Dimly, he hears the furious typing from Loki and Natasha briefly pause.

_Captain Steven Grant Rogers, commander of the Starship Avenger. You have something which belongs to us. We do not take kindly to thieves. Hand over the Winter Soldier or HYDRA will be forced to take lethal recourse. You are surrounded and running out of time. By the time this missive reaches you, it will already be too late. Dispatch the Winter Soldier in a pod to the fleet envoy or the missiles already launched will crush your hull in 5 minutes from the termination of this message._

The message, spoken in a voice that’s clearly been run through a distortion device, ends with a sharp beep. The HYDRA logo disappears and before Steve can move, the alarms start blaring.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Natasha swears as Sam, from his seat, shouts “ _Incoming missiles!”_

“ _Turn off the gravity, Tony,_ ” Steve shouts into the coms just as Sam jams onto the lever that puts them into sonic drive.

They can almost hear the space around them crunch as _The_ _Avenger_ tries to thrust more speed into their movement, working against the Quadrant gravity and pulling to break free of the missile trajectory.

Steve just manages to buckle into his seat as a different sound, a screeching, goes up and suddenly, everything lurches, Steve’s legs coming off the floor.

“Shit,” Loki remarks and he gets dislodged from his seat, nearly flies up toward the ceiling, except Thor grabs him at the last moment, slams him back down onto his seat. Loki lets out a curse and manages to grab onto the armrests as Thor somehow reaches across, straining, shoves the belt into its socket.

“How are we supposed to give them the Winter Soldier,” Clint gasps in pain from his seat, “If they obliterate us.”

“ _No one’s giving them the Winter Soldier_ ,” Steve grinds out through the headache and nausea of his body trying to adjust suddenly being thrown into the almost violent, empty force of anti-gravity.

“We’re not getting obliterated, damnit!” Sam shouts from his seat.

“This is useless,” Natasha growls in frustration. “We have to let them have the mainframe.”

“We have five minutes until HYDRA has full control of our system,” Loki says. He’s clenching his teeth. He looks even paler than usual. Steve doesn’t have time to wonder if the gravitational adjustment is wreaking worse havoc on him because he’s a Jotun.

“Captain, we must leave,” Thor says. “We must force a land--”

Thor doesn’t get to finish his sentence, because a large blast rocks the entire ship. Thor is nearly thrown from his seat. Loki manages to hold onto his wrist. Natasha’s head snaps back onto her headrest and Clint’s forehead slams down onto his console.

Steve feels like his head is scrambled, his insides jarring between physical forces that should not exist and only exist now to conflict. All they need now is for chemistry to fail them altogether and their blood to boil through their veins.

“Loki,” Steve gasps out and Loki, for once, listens. He shoves Thor out of the way, manages to reach his console as another blast rocks them, now from the left side.

Alarms blare out across the ship, insistent and deafening, and Tony’s voice comes through the comms.

“ _Engines two and four are gone, Cap. One oxygen turbine is gone._ _Fire something back._ ”

“This is a _bad fucking idea_ ,” Sam says before he hits the lever.

In the midst of sonic drive, getting hit on both sides by missiles, and more red squadrons popping up on the grid, a cluster just in front of them, the _Avenger_ tenses for fire. Then it spits out two photon torpedos, shuddering the entire time.

Steve clenches his teeth, grips his already broken armrests tightly as they’re thrown back again.

“Can we exit?” Steve’s eyes are watering from pain now. His heart is thundering in his chest and his lungs are coming up short. “Loki. Can we. Without engines.”

The last blast backwards had slammed Loki into something and now he licks at his bleeding lip, another spot of blood at his temple.

“With all due respect, Captain,” Loki says. “We do not have a fucking choice.”

He pulls up his navigation grids, starts keying in the commands and coordinates. He hits execute, yells at Thor to force down the stuck lever, just as a third blast hits and Tony’s voice comes back “ _Third engine down. One launcher damaged. We’re on one leg and dying._ _Cap!"_

 _The_ _Avenger_ tilts precariously down into the Negative Quadrant, sonic drive still pulling it through the space. For a moment it slices through the space, moves like a ghost past two different HYDRA squadrons, avoids two different photon blasts.

For just a moment Steve thinks, wildly, that it’s working, that despite three failed engines, a lost oxygen turbine, and a photon launcher beyond repair, they’re going to crunch out of the Quadrant and into the regular system before their system is overrun by HYDRA.

In retrospect, it’s laughable.

“Oh Jesus _fuck_ ,” Sam says, just before they slam into the Wobble.

Everything is suspended, their seats liable to be torn from where they’re anchored, their organs both being pulled by anti-gravity and pushed back by the Wobble’s gravity. Steve’s eyes find Sam’s, both wide, panicked, as assured of this moment at the end of their mortality as they were of their companionship when they first first.

He remembers large, cool blue eyes and his stomach sinks in the millisecond between hitting the Wobble and their deaths, thinking how unbearable it was that he had finally found him, only for both of them to lose each other again. It was so unfair that Steve could scream.

He did scream, in fact, and it was only then that the sounds came crashing back to them.

A horrible, gut-wrenching, ear-splitting screech, like metal being torn apart, fills their ears, knocks out Sam and then, with a soft grunt, Natasha. Loki, and not Thor, holds his brother, as Thor covers his ears with his hands, shaking violently. Clint vomits into his hand and Steve thinks he’s going to go blind from the noise, it’s so loud and bright.

Then the Wobble spits them out of the Negative Quadrant, the broken, almost wrecked _Starship Avenger_ hurtling out of the void and through real space, toward a planet, catching on fire through its atmosphere, and, with another sickening screech, crashing into one of its oceans.


	9. Alfheim, Pt. I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Somehow, this chapter got away from me even though it's deeply transitional. Splitting it up into two parts so no one has to deal with 17,000 words of scrolling. 
> 
> In other news, Guardians of the Galaxy 2 was so great and everything should always take place in space?? You're all very welcome for Avengers space pirates.

It isn’t an ocean, it turns out. It’s a lake with, fortuitously, enough depth of water to not completely destroy _The Avenger_ and kill all of its occupants, but not so deep that the crew has to somehow gain consciousness fast enough to swim out before the ship gets flooded. _The_ _Avenger_ slams into the lake on its side, which miraculously keeps the primary hull and neck of the ship from breaking clean from the secondary hull and the rest of the ship body. Mostly, the impact shudders through the ship, breaking off large pieces of the titanium alloy shell, shattering windows, and making a helpless shamble of the interior. The engines are burned through, beyond repair. The _Avenger_ sinks comfortably into the mud of the lake floor, grounded.   

  
Steve wakes up nearly an hour later, still strapped to his seat, but slanted at an angle, with a migraine so thick he can barely see around it. His entire body aches and it feels like there’s a fire simmering where his internal organs are supposed to be. He has cuts on his forehead, on his arms, and there’s something sharp sticking in his leg. He pulls in a deep, harsh breath and shakily reaches out to unbuckle himself before taking account of his surroundings. His processing functions are working so slowly, he’s so compromised, that even after he unbuckles himself, he has to hold his head in his hands, stick his face between his legs and take in deep breaths to keep from vomiting. The tilt doesn’t help, making his vision swim sickeningly around him.

It almost works. Then his stomach roils and he manages to stick his head over his armrest to vomit to the side. It takes twice for his body to decide that it doesn't have anything left to give and he slumps back into his chair after, eyes closed, a sheen of sweat on his brow.

“You’re awake,” someone says to his left. He doesn’t know who it is, can’t place a voice to a person because _his head hurts so damned much_. It only barely occurs to him to register that a voice means that _someone_ else is still alive. That thought makes him so nauseous he opens his eyes again.

The relief he feels when he sees Sam pick his way over wreckage to come to him is so immense that he’s rendered speechless.

Sam’s left arm is bloody and he has deep scratches on his jaw, but otherwise he looks like he’s in one piece.  
  
“Oh god,” Steve finally manages. He reaches up, not being able to stand yet, pulls Sam down into a hug. He buries his face in Sam’s shoulder, heart beating ferociously, preemptive grief and relief warring and threatening to overwhelm him. “Oh god, Sam. You’re okay.”

“God, yeah,” Sam breathes into Steve’s shoulder. His voice is shaky. They hold on for a few more seconds before letting go.

“Is anyone--”

“I don’t know,” Sam says lowly. “I managed to pull Natasha and Clint out from the wreckage. Clint woke up before she did. I told him to take her to shore.”

“Fuck,” Steve says. “Shore?”

“We’re not drowning,” Sam says. “But there’s water leaking in. We have to find everyone and get out.”

“Where’s Thor--”

A sudden groaning emerges from what could be the right side of Command, but could easily be the left side.

“I am here, Captain,” Thor says. “Where is Loki?”

There is no response and Steve, despite his incapacitation, can feel Thor tense, can feel him use his enormous power and Asgardian strength to lift himself from the wreckage.

“Loki,” he says, getting to his feet. “Loki.”

There’s no answer for two silent, awful minutes. Steve can hear Thor lift things, push debris out of the way with increasing urgency.

“Loki, this is not funny,” Thor says.

Steve is so overcome with nausea that he almost doesn’t hear the panic in Thor’s voice, the tremor that indicates just how tightly wound he is.

“This is not the time for your tricks,” Thor says again and this time his panic is barely concealed.

Sam looks at Steve in worry and Steve reaches up to him. He struggles to his feet with Sam’s help and even then, he feels his center of gravity shift askew, the tilt of the ship making him lose his balance almost immediately and stumble into Sam, who catches him.

He’s about to move forward to help search when he hears an urgent sound come from Thor, somewhere between a grunt and an _Oh!_ Thor shifts aside some wreckage--part of a console and a whole seat--at the far end of the ruins of Command.

Loki lies unconscious, both of his legs pinned by the seat, something sticking out of his arm, which seems to be bent in an unnatural direction, and blood smeared across his forehead. Thor falls to his knees next to him, hands immediately moving over his body, checking for a pulse, for broken bones, for more bleeding. He’s pale as his hands move, every sinew of muscle in his body tight as a spring with tension, ready to pop.

“Is he--” Steve starts and then Thor uses his strength to remove the metal shard from Loki’s arm, which makes Loki groan quietly, shudder in pain. Thor lets out a small cry, a shaky breath.

“He breathes,” he says. He carefully, gingerly, lifts Loki to his chest, holds him in his arms. “He is alive.”

Both Steve and Sam let out a breath that they didn’t know they were holding.

“Get him to shore, Thor,” Steve says, still leaning on Sam. “He needs medical attention. We have to stop the bleeding. He probably has a severe concussion.”

That’s when Steve remembers the rest of their crew.

“Sam, Bruce and Tony,” Steve says, turning to Sam.

Sam nods at him.

“Are you okay to stand?”

Steve lets go of Sam, gingerly tests his balance. He slides a little against the tilt, but mostly he’s able to regain his legs.

“I’ll be okay.”

Sam walks up against the tilt, fights his way through the debris to where the Command door is open, the system crash having shut down all of the ship’s security mechanisms, including the access manuals.

Steve has a hundred thoughts shoving through his head at the same moment--what happened, what to do next, what to do with the _Avenger_ , how to figure out where they are, how to explain their plight to the local planetary authorities without having them hand them over to S.H.I.E.L.D, how long they have before HYDRA finds them. Thor picks Loki up, arms under Loki’s lower back, Loki held close to his chest, as though Thor means to protect him now, though, or perhaps because, he could not before.

“Captain,” Thor nods at him and then looks at him with a frown.

“Thor?” Steve acknowledges.

“Captain,” Thor says again. “Dr. Banner and Stark. They were not the only ones left on this ship.”

It’s only then that Steve’s thoughts come to a grinding halt. He feels a sick, horrifying swoop in his stomach, what color that was left draining from his face.

“Bucky,” he says, through his extreme nausea and, now, overwhelming guilt. In the midst of an attack and crash, Steve had barely had a second to think about Bucky, to wonder if he was safe. He turns toward the open Command door, fighting against planetary gravity after months in space. His head spins and he ignores it. It’s only when he reaches the open doorframe that he remembers that Tony had turned the ship gravity off just before they hit the Wobble.

Bucky had been in his cage the entire time, with nothing restraining him, his body certainly slamming into the ceilings and walls as the _Avenger_ made its fiery crash out of space and onto whatever planet they were on now.

  
Steve is nearly in a blind panic as he struggles out of Command, pulls himself through the corridors, holding onto the wall and any protrusion he can get a grip on where the tilt acts against him. He slips and slides, moving incrementally against the unfamiliar gravity, like trying to cut through molasses, making the most infuriatingly slow progress toward the back of the ship. By the time he gets past the Kitchen, he’s nearly panting and his migraine is threatening to render him unconscious. He forces himself to keep moving, one foot in front of the arm, one hand hold to the next.

By the time he reaches the Den, water is starting to leak in through cracks and gaps in the burnt hull. The door is open, of course, and Steve struggles through, gasps and moves to the side as a chair dislodges suddenly and comes hurtling at him. He dodges it just in time and it falls through the open doorway, down the hallway, clattering loudly against the ship wall as it does. He fights toward where the gilded copper cage has disappeared altogether. Bucky’s cot is slammed upside down against the leftmost wall, creating a deep dent in the alloy. Everything that had been slammed up against the ceiling when the gravity had been turned off had been similarly slammed down to the floor upon their grounding. Everything in the Den is a complete wreck.

“Bucky,” Steve calls out. His voice is a little thin to his ears. He’s still trying to catch his breath.

No one answers him. Through the wreckage, he can’t even see Bucky’s body. He could be buried under any assortment of space equipment, a pipe piercing his lungs. Steve clutches the wall suddenly to keep himself upright.

“Buck,” he calls out again, more urgently. “Bucky, where are you?”

Still no answer.

“I swear to god, Buck,” Steve says. “If you die, I’m going to kill you.”

At long length, he hears a low rasp from the rightmost corner. It sounds like someone gasping for breath, a gurgle or a cackle, and it’s only after a few seconds that Steve realizes that it’s Bucky and that he’s laughing.

  
Steve maneuvers himself toward the horrible sound, holding onto the wall closest to him to pull himself toward Bucky. There are two chairs blocking him. Steve uses most of his strength to shove them out of the way and they fall to the opposite side of the room with a loud clatter.

Behind the chairs, Bucky’s wrapped his metal hand around a thick silver pipe that’s built into the wall and has, miraculously, survived impact. He’s resting his back against the wall, one leg pulled up to his chest, the other laid out in front. His flesh arm is bloody and scratched, but there’s nothing sticking out of it. His legs are similarly bruised, but nothing that can’t be cured with a few shots. Then Steve looks up.

“Holy shit,” he breathes out.

The Winter Soldier looks at him. He watches Steve’s features crumple in horror and then he looks down to what he knows Steve is looking at. It’s obvious. No one just stares at someone’s stomach unless there’s something piercing it. In this case, it’s a thin, silver rod. A broken chair leg, protruding from just between Bucky’s ribs. Red has soaked through his clothes. A lot of red. A significant amount of red.

The Winter Soldier throws his head back and laughs.

  
How Steve manages to get Bucky out of _The_ _Avenger_ that day, he’ll never be able to fully recount. He doesn’t remember much of the event, truth be told. It’s like he blacked out, his memory and his consciousness tucked away to a place he couldn’t reach, because that was the only way he could process what he saw and conserve enough energy to get both him and Bucky out of the ship and to shore.

He doesn’t remember how long it took or how, impossibly, they had managed to do so, despite there being a pole lodged in Bucky’s ribs, despite Steve’s blinding migraine, despite the obstacles of wreckage and the tilt of the ship and the water steadily leaking in, submerging Steve’s beloved ship. Whatever deity or supernatural force grants him the extraterrestrial strength and power to get them out works double that day, Bucky leaning against Steve, one hand holding the pole in place, Steve taking the entirety of Bucky’s weight without a thought. He drags the two of them out of there, somehow slogs the shallows of the lake to the shore, and if, after all of that, Steve collapses to the sand, on all fours, and shortly thereafter blacks out, well, no one was going to ever blame him for it.

  
When Steve regains consciousness, it’s to a dark room with open windows. A warm breeze rustles curtains that are drawn closed. A light illuminates the center of the room, to Steve’s right. Confused, exhausted, and wary, he turns his head toward it and feels a thrill of shock run down his spine. He pushes himself up to a sitting position, wincing almost immediately from shooting pains in his arms and sides. His body feels like it’s been at least partially put through a meat grinder and his left leg gives off a sharp throb of pain. He grits his teeth and ignores it, stumbles to his feet and over to the other bed.

Bucky’s still asleep, his flesh arm bound in gauze, the pole removed from between his ribs.

He’s shirtless, with more gauze wrapped tightly around his middle, a blanket pulled up to his waist, and his metal wrist handcuffed to the bedpost. Steve frowns as he sees it, although he knows, and he's sure everyone else knows, that a normal handcuff wouldn’t restrain the Winter Soldier on his worst of days. He lets out a sigh of relief as he watches the rise and fall of Bucky’s chest. There’s a long cut under Bucky’s jaw and another across the bridge of his nose, the mottled purple of bruising across his throat, and deep blue-purple bags under his eyes, but he’s alive, if a little worse for the wear.

Steve lets his head fall forward, carefully, onto Bucky’s chest with a sigh. He had come so close to losing Bucky again, due to his own preoccupation, his own thoughtlessness, that his own chest tightens with the overwhelming closeness of it all. If Bucky had died, in Steve’s own captivity, under Steve’s own watch, he would never have been able to forgive himself.

He’s so preoccupied struggling under the weight of his own guilt that he doesn’t feel the shift under him, Bucky’s breathing adjusting. It isn’t until a hand tentatively touches the back of his head that Steve freezes. He raises his head and Bucky’s staring at him quietly, a little dazed.

“Buck,” Steve says immediately, straightening, and then regretting it when Bucky’s hand falls away. Steve takes it between his own hands anyway, Bucky staring at them, then at him. “Fuck, I’m so sorry. How are you feeling?”

Bucky takes in a shuddering breath, licks his dry lips. He attempts to shrug and then a wince flickers across his otherwise impassive face.

“Been worse,” he says. “Usually I’m left to...mend myself.”

“Jesus Christ,” Steve says and a wry smiles tugs up the corner of Bucky’s mouth. “You had a chair leg sticking out of your chest.”

“Flesh wound,” Bucky offers. Then, apparently amused with this offering, he tries to laugh. It comes up raspy, something guttural from his chest, and he stops short with a frown.

“You sound terrible,” Steve says, still holding Bucky’s hand.

“You left me,” Bucky says blandly. “And turned off the gravity.”

Steve’s stomach drops. He pales, opens his mouth to apologize, to grovel, even, but Bucky just smirks at him instead.

“It was fun,” he says, apparently amused. “Until I hit the ceiling.”

“Jesus Christ,” Steve says again, conflicted between guilt and relief that Bucky can still make jokes, even in the most desperate of situations. “Well I’m sor--

“Don’t,” Bucky, or the Winter Soldier, Steve still can’t tell, cuts him off. “You pulled me out of the wreckage. Even though your body was collapsing.”

“I don’t really have a good memory of the past...however long,” Steve says. “And I wasn’t going to leave you behind.”

“It was impressive,” Bucky says, closing his eyes briefly. Then he snaps them open and glares at Steve. “And stupid. Don’t do it again.”

“You’re a pain in my ass, Barnes,” Steve says.

This time Bucky, or the Winter Soldier, or both, gives him a real smile.

“I know.”

Steve sighs, shakes his head a little in exasperation, a bit in a nostalgic fondness he can't quite shake.

Bucky hesitates, looks as though he wants something. Steve thinks he knows what and holds perfectly still. Taking a breath, Bucky disentangles their hands, reaches forward to touch Steve’s arm. His fingers hover, barely an inch from Steve’s skin. Steve doesn’t say anything, allows him to take however long he needs. It’s another few seconds before Bucky swallows whatever internal dilemma he’s battling. His fingertips brush cautiously against Steve’s forearm.  

“You’re hurt,” Bucky says, a little flatly.

“I’m okay, Buck,” Steve assures him.

“You had something in your leg,” Bucky says. He looks as unimpressed as he sounds.

Steve had forgotten about that. He doesn’t move his arm away from Bucky, afraid to break this first, tentative contact, in case it isn’t offered again. He stretches his leg out in front of him, to the side of the bed. There’s gauze tightly wound around his calf.

“That explains the throbbing pain,” Steve says lightly and almost immediately, Bucky’s fingers dig into his arm. Steve looks back at him in surprise.

“You’re not okay,” Bucky grits out.

“Flesh wound?” Steve tries and Bucky glowers so darkly at him and it reminds him so much of _his_ Bucky, of how he used to be, that Steve laughs out loud.

“You were always like this,” Bucky says, although he phrases it almost like a question, as though he’s uncertain what he’s remembering or asking.

Steve can’t help the hope that flutters just above his ribs.

“Something like that,” Steve says.

“I don’t like it,” Bucky says and finally lets go of Steve’s arm.

“Why Buck,” a grin starts stealing over Steve’s face. “Do you _care_?”

“No,” Bucky says, glaring. He closes his eyes, as though preparing for sleep. “You are annoying. Go harass your crew.”

Steve can’t stop grinning. His head is still a bit foggy, his leg hurts, and he aches all over, but this is the closest to happy he’s felt in an absurdly long time.

“I’d rather harass you.”

“I don’t like it,” Bucky says, tries to glare again. “We’re not friends. Leave me alone.”

Steve has approximately five seconds to reconsider his next move, but it’s almost too late to process his dire decision-making skills and its terrible consequences before he carefully nudges Bucky’s side with his knee.  

“Move over.”

There’s a moment during which Bucky is rendered so speechless that his mouth actually falls askew. He has the look of a half-human, half-expressionless cyborg who’s just been told he’s actually an alien prince. That’s all the astonished opening Steve needs to side check Bucky closer to the side he’s handcuffed to, and spread himself next to him on the bed, back against the headboard, legs stretched in front. If the Winter Soldier is unused to or even uncomfortable with such an invasion of his privacy, Bucky Barnes is still so shocked that he can offer no protest and, ultimately, no act of resistance or violence against Steve’s person.

The bed is a little too small for two large, muscled men, so they crowd together on what space there is, and although Bucky’s tense for a full ten minutes, eventually he relaxes as much as he must feel he’s allowed. His shoulder leans cautiously into Steve’s own, his leg pressed flush against Steve’s, and Steve thinks they’re injured, grounded, and on the run, his ship is destroyed, he has no idea where his crew is, and he’s ruined just about everything, but he must be at least marginally insane, because no, he’s not just close to happy, he _is_ , happy.

  
When the door finally opens, Bucky tenses next to Steve. They’ve been sitting mostly in silence for the better part of an hour and Steve even thinks he’s dozed in and out of consciousness. Maybe it’s his own distinct lack of self-preservation, but at no point, not for a moment, had he felt in danger. If anything, he’d felt oddly comforted by Bucky’s presence, silent and slightly unfamiliar though it was.

It’s the last person Steve wants to see at the moment and he tenses too, which makes Bucky tense further, almost dangerously, and he’s about to say something when Natasha raises her hand.

“Truce,” she says. “Your indecision grounded our ship and my lack of precaution let HYDRA hackers in. Even?”

“Even,” Steve says, letting out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. “I’m sorry, Nat.”

“It doesn’t matter now,” Natasha says, tersely. She watches Bucky with open hostility and he watches her back with something less than that, not anger, but something bordering curiosity. He almost looks puzzled, as though she’s something he can’t quite figure out.

“Where are we?” Steve asks. He doesn’t like the way Natasha is looking at Bucky, like he’s the enemy, like he wasn’t a victim in his own right. It almost makes him say something, but he stops himself in time, remembers that he’s just won a small victory and even small victories with Natasha Romanoff were more than cause to celebrate and shut the entire hell up.

“An old S.H.I.E.L.D. compound,” Natasha says. She crosses her arms, then uncrosses them. “We’re safe here for now.”

“Where is everyone else?” Steve asks. Now that it isn’t just him and Bucky, the rest of their situation comes flooding back to him, the questions, the impossibility of their circumstances. “Is everyone okay? How did we get here? Whose compound is this?”  

Natasha tucks a stray piece of hair behind her ear. She shifts her weight from one leg to the other. It’s the most Steve has ever seen her fidget. _She’s nervous_ , it dawns on him.

“Everyone’s fine,” she says. “Someone Tony knows.”

“Pepper?” Steve frowns, but that’s not right. Pepper Potts, Tony’s long-term girlfriend and love of his very strange life, lives on Midgard, for some reason that Tony’s never been able to explain.

“No,” Natasha says shortly. “Stop asking questions and get out of bed. Everyone’s waiting.”

“Natasha,” Steve says. He hasn’t earned her forgiveness yet, truce or not. With Bucky against his side, it’s hard for him to feel any guilt over it, but he doesn’t forget how much he cares about her, how long they’ve worked together, side-by-side, a flawless unit. Steve was one of the first, and only, people Natasha’s ever let in, so betraying her the way he did, well. It’s going to take more than a mistake on her part for him to fix what he broke. He’s going to try, though.

“Don’t take too long,” is all she says.

She turns on her heels to exit, her hand brushing the doorframe. That’s when Bucky shifts on the bed, leans forward.

“Oh,” he says quietly. “You should have introduced yourself sooner. Natalya.”

Natasha freezes, her entire body going rigid, stiff as a board. She’s a statue, slight frame in the middle of the doorframe, hand on the edge, red hair bright against her black uniform. For a moment, Steve thinks she’s swaying.

Then she releases her grip on the door and walks out.

“You know her?” Steve asks immediately, turning toward Bucky.

 Bucky’s still hunched forward, staring out the door with more interest than Steve’s seen him take in anything since he’s been captured. Then he settles back against the backboard, relaxing.

“No,” he says.

“You called her--” Steve starts and Bucky closes his eyes in response, ignoring him.

“Stop bothering me,” he says. “Go talk to your crew. You almost killed them.”

“Bucky,” Steve says.

“I’m going back to sleep,” Bucky says, then scoots down on the bed, as far down as the handcuff allows him to, and turns onto his side.

Steve stares at the line of Bucky’s back for a full minute and when Bucky doesn’t seem to change his mind, he sighs in frustration and gets to his feet. He winces immediately, lets out a little _oof_ of pain, forgetting, of course, that he has his own healing injuries.

“Stupid,” he is almost positive he hears Bucky mutter from the other side.

  
Steve doesn’t have much time to think about what Bucky and Natasha are hiding, although he tucks away his questions for more consideration after he gets his bearings. He walks carefully out of their room, shifting his weight more heavily onto the uninjured leg, which results in a rather noticeable limp. He moves into a narrow hallway, white and unadorned, which leads off to two different rooms and a set of stairs. He eyes the stairs warily, but, luckily, he doesn’t make it there. One of the chrome doorways slides open with a hiss and a man Steve doesn’t recognize appears with what looks like an old cellular phone held up to his ear. He’s dark-skinned, middle-aged, maybe around Tony’s age, with close-cropped hair and a leather jacket pulled around sturdy shoulders.

“No, Tony, a hat isn’t going to disguise you,” he’s saying. He pauses, just past the doorway, evidently unaware of Steve’s presence. “Are you kidding? Your face is on every bulletin.” He pauses. “Yeah, sure, shave off your mustache, that’ll definitely help you with S.H.I.E.L.D. _and_ Pepper.”

Steve can almost _see_ the man roll his eyes, although he can really only see his profile, which is also obscured in shadows in the dimly lit hallway.

“What do you mean I can’t bring Pepper into it? Of course I can bring Pepper into it. You bring Pepper into _everything_.” Another five second pause as Tony blathers on before the man interrupts him. “No. Pepper loves me. I put up with you and she thanks me for it every time. A lesser man would’ve let you suffer through prep school alone.”

A full twenty seconds this time. The man reaches the other door, but stops, doesn’t proceed through it. He leans his forehead against the wall and Steve thinks he’s going to knock his head against it in frustration.

“You’re a pain in my ass, Stark,” the man finally says. “Don’t get caught. Also bring back some milk. We’re out. Bye.”

The man ends the call and slides the phone into one of his jacket pockets, shaking his head as he does so. He’s about to key in the access code to the next room when Steve finally decides to step forward.

“Hey,” he says. “I don’t think we’ve met.”

The man looks at Steve in surprise, wary for a moment, then relaxes.

“Of course not,” he says. “You’ve been unconscious for a while. Captain Rogers, right?”

“Just Steve,” Steve says, extends a hand.

The man takes it. He has a good shake, firm, and Steve knows immediately that this is someone others can rely on, someone solid and dependable.

“James Rhodes,” the man says with a smile. It’s easy and warm, the kind of smile that instantly makes the other person feel comfortable. “You can call me Rhodey.”

Suddenly everything falls into place.

“Oh,” Steve says. “Rhodey. Tony’s best friend? The S.H.I.E.L.D. colonel.”

“He’s still going around telling people I’m his best friend?” Rhodey asks, although it’s with an amused smile. “Bastard. I told him he wasn’t allowed to call me that after the last time.”

Steve’s known Rhodey for all of 45 seconds and he already deeply likes him.

“What happened the last time?”

“Too many shots of tequila,” Rhodey groans. “I have a theory he subconsciously uses me as another one of his experiments. How drunk can we make a middle aged black man before his liver gives out?”

“But you let him,” Steve grins, amused.

“Every goddamned _time_ I say no,” Rhodey says.

“Tony’s not an easy person to say no to,” Steve says.

“Who you telling, Rogers?” Rhodey says, not with a palm to his face, but Steve can imagine it vividly.

“Where is he?” Steve asks, sobering a little. “Is he okay? Shit, I didn’t even see him and Bruce and it was my fault--”

“Hey, relax, Cap,” Rhodey says and Steve can tell that Tony’s told his best friend of decades every single thing about the ship and their crewmates. “Everyone’s okay. Dr. Banner actually didn’t have a scratch on him. Weirdest thing.”

“And Tony?” Steve asks apprehensively.

Rhodey shrugs.

“He’s had worse after a night out,” he says. “The others are actually gathered in the conference room. You feeling up to it? I think they’re waiting for you.”

“Yeah,” Steve says, although that might not strictly speaking be true. He’s not sure what to tell any of them, how to begin apologizing. It must show on his face, because Rhodey puts a hand on his shoulder, firm and comforting. His face is open, kind.

“Don’t beat yourself up about any of it,” Rhodey says. “I was a part of a unit for a long time. You might be the leader, but a team falls on the strengths and weaknesses of every member. And you got them out as safe as you could. I’ve lost soldiers to less.”

Rhodey would have made a good commander at S.H.I.E.L.D., Steve can see it easily.

“Thank you, Rhodey,” Steve says with an exhale. Rhodey pats his shoulder twice and then lets him go, turns to put in the access code. “You know, I was at S.H.I.E.L.D. for a while.”  

That makes Rhodey laugh for some reason.

“Oh I know, Rogers,” he says. “Everyone knows about you.”

  
The conference room isn’t really much more than a room with couches squashed in against all four walls and a long white table in the center to match the rest of the solid white of the room. Only the couches are a different color and even then, a light shade of grey. It almost hurts Steve’s eyes.

“It’s a bit much, isn’t it?” Clint says.  
  
Steve’s eyes go to Clint first and the relief washes over him urgently as, one by one, he sees the members of his crew. Clint and Sam are on opposite ends of the couch, Clint with gauze around his arm and a bruising on his left cheekbone and Sam with his wrists and right knee bound. Bruce is pacing near the window, just a light scratch at his temple, and Natasha, with no visible wounds, is bent over the table, where there’s papers, maps, and one heavy looking electronic pad set out, which Thor, hair pulled up in a ponytail and a bandage on his neck, is scrolling through. Everyone is a little battered, a bit injured, but it’s nothing serious, nothing that can’t be healed with some coolant and rest.

Steve looks at the set up, at his crew, and his throat dries. He tries to come up with something to say, but every apology he can offer lies at the bottom of the lake with the remains of their home.

“I’m sor--”

“Okay, who called first words out of his mouth?” Clint asks, looking around the room.

“I thought he might say hi first,” Thor admits and hands over a wad of cash.

“I knew it,” Sam says triumphantly from the couch. He grins at Steve. “I know my boy.”

Clint snorts and Bruce hands over his bet with an apologetic look at Steve. Then Clint looks at Natasha. Natasha pointedly ignores him.

“Don’t act like you didn’t go in, Romanoff,” Clint says. “Look at however many maps you want, you owe me and Wilson.”

Rhodey watches the scene with a kind of bemusement, but he must be used to some level of absurdity, likely a consequence of being best friends with Tony Stark, because he mostly ignores it with a slight twitch of his mouth, before settling into one of the grey chairs tucked into the table.

Natasha scowls and reaches into her jacket.

Steve lets out a sigh of relief, lets his shoulders sag.

“Where’s Loki?” he asks. “And Tony?”

“Tony’s out taking care of something,” Rhodey says vaguely as he takes his phone out again, scrolling through it. “He swore me to secrecy.”

“Sounds suspicious,” Clint remarks.

“It’s Tony, so it’s either illegal or--” Rhodey pauses, finger hovering above his phone screen. “No, just illegal. It’s illegal.”

“Oh,” Clint says. “That’s fine then.”

“Thor?” Steve asks, frowning. The Asgardian prince is a little subdued from usual, but he’s present and not out of his mind with grief, so Loki must not be too injured.

“He is alive, Captain,” Thor says. His voice is the barest bit tight, but if anyone notices, no one says anything. “Tony’s companion, James Rhodes, is a fine individual who has given him a room and a bed to aid in his recovery and Dr. Banner has cured him all his ailments.”

Bruce starts at that.

“Oh I didn’t do that much,” he says sheepishly. “I just stopped the bleeding and put the bones back in place.”

“Do not be so modest,” Thor says, more brightly now. “You are the finest doctor in the Nine Realms and have saved my brother’s life. He will not thank you for it and he will likely complain about all of your incompetencies, but know that he means well and you have my eternal gratitude.”

Bruce pauses at that pronunciation, blinking in mild perplexity.

“...thanks?”

Clint and Sam snicker and Natasha’s mouth thins into a barely repressed smile and it’s all so relaxed, all so familiar, that Steve has to take a moment to collect himself. He doesn’t tear up, but it’s a close thing.

“Come sit next to me, Cap,” Rhodey says, pulling out a grey seat. “We have a lot to catch you up on.”

  
They’re on Alfheim, Rhodey explains to him, in an old, abandoned bunker half-built into a hill that S.H.I.E.L.D. had used two centuries ago when it had a base in the city. Rhodey’s been living on Alfheim on and off for the past decade, in charge of training and directing a few S.H.I.E.L.D. units to act as support for the capital and appointed as the off-planet contact person between President Fury and IPGS and the outer planets. It turns out that Loki and Tony had had A Conversation, unbeknownst to Steve, and while the Wobble hadn’t helped and neither had the HYDRA attack, their positioning in the Quadrant wasn’t wholly left to chance. From what Steve can piece together, based on Rhodey’s story, given the missing presences of Tony and Loki, they had been preemptively positioned to exit into Alfheim if the engines were going to fail anyway. HYDRA had accelerated that process, but except for the surprise, chaos, and violence of it all, they had ended up almost precisely where Loki had programmed them to end up. Their ship was in ruins, and now waterlogged, their mainframe completely overrun and fried, their engines beyond saving, but Rhodey had been expecting them, so when they crashed, he was able to secure a few medics and trainees he trusted with his life and help the crew to shore.  
  
When Steve asks him how they had gotten through the planet’s atmosphere without setting off a dozen Border Patrol alarms and flagging S.H.I.E.L.D. forces down upon them, Rhodey waves his hand dubiously. It is in that brief moment that Steve can see it, how this man could not only put up with Tony Stark for decades, but also be considered his best friend.

The bunker is unmarked and largely unmanned, hewed from white stone and mostly hidden underground, only one level emerging from the hill that it is set into. A Signature Cloak pulses from a corner of the roof, keeping the entire structure invisible from most scanners and the untrained eye. There are certain flaws in the general design that are unavoidable, like its size and the limited number of escape tunnels, although no flaw so large as the bunker’s inclusion in the S.H.I.E.L.D. database. Anyone who has the appropriate accesses and the wherewithal to know where to look can easily narrow the location of this old base, but in general it’s about as safe as they can hope to get right now. Steve is deeply grateful just for the chance to recover from their injuries and regroup.

“HYDRA’s anywhere in a three planet radius,” Natasha says. She has an updated map of the Nine Galaxies pulled up on the tablet. There are no holopads, no comlogs or comsets here, just paper and technology that’s been outdated for the past two centuries at a minimum. She’s frowning in distaste, and Steve’s fairly certain it’s not because of the intel, but because of the age of the piece of technology that she’s holding. Nothing is projecting, nothing is immediately scanning, and if she wants to type in anything, she has to physically touch the screen and wait for the tablet to process the information.

“Which means they know we’re anywhere in a three planet radius,” Steve says and Natasha gratifies him with a short nod. “Alfheim, Muspelheim, or Vanaheim.”

“We entered the Quadrant from Vanaheim,” Natasha says. “They’re not going to go looking for us there.”

“That gives us a one planet buffer,” Steve says. He exhales his anxiety, the slowly building tension between his shoulders.

“If _they_ enter the atmosphere, we’ll know,” Rhodey assures Steve. He’s looking at his phone again, tapping his fingers on the tabletop.

It turns out that although all of the communication devices, including holopads, much to Clint’s despair, have been disconnected inside the bunker for security purposes, older technology doesn’t use data from the same interplanetary provider that everyone is obligated to use. This makes newer technologies completely traceable on any modern network, but older technologies, which access radiowaves and networks that are only maintained out of sheer nostalgia and not out of any sort of practical consideration, largely undetectable. Rhodey’s phone and the tablet that Natasha has commandeered are two of only a few pieces of functional relics that they’re able to use now.

“They have an entire fleet at their disposal,” Natasha says. She pushes back a stray strand of hair and frowns at whatever she’s looking at in front of her. “Even if we get a warning, we’ll have a maximum thirty minute head start. And their numbers can spread across a quarter of this planet.”

“Are you saying we’re fucked?” Clint asks casually from the couch. He’s picking at a thread, bored without something to actually do with his hands.

“I’m saying we need a plan,” Natasha says.

“How about,” a voice says behind Steve and he jumps, as does everyone else in the room, as the door slides open. “Money? And a ship?”

Tony walks in, his stride a little off, maybe a slight limp to his left side, but still, somehow, overtly arrogant. Natasha, who had frozen and narrowed her eyes, then proceeds to roll them.

Tony grins widely, tosses an unsuspecting Rhodey a large, plastic jug of milk.

“Hi honey, I’m home.”

Rhodey rolls his eyes.

“Yeah,” he says with a pained expression. “But at what cost?”

  
Whatever Tony’s actual business was, he refuses to offer more than a few cryptic phrases here and there; things in the vein of “a task of import,” “oh just things,” “some people I know,” and “honestly, Romanoff, it sounds like you don’t trust me.” To which Natasha very pointedly and emphatically replies that she doesn’t.

“You wound me, my dear Russian, possibly former spy,” Tony says, clutching at his heart dramatically. He drops equally dramatically onto the couch, in between Clint and Sam. Sam rolls his eyes and Clint eyes him with distaste and Thor, from his place at the table, gives them all a mild and patient look.

“A girl can only dream,” Natasha says, all teeth. Then she goes back to looking bored. “You want to go back to the ship and money you were offering?”

“Oh, yes,” Tony says, waving a hand carelessly. “I have those things. Well, I can offer those things. I don’t have a ship, but I have an obscene amount of money that usually can be used to buy things such as ships.”

“That’s tied up,” Clint says. “Dear old dad, audit, ‘innocent victim of an embezzling billionaire genius,’ any of your own words ring a bell?”

“First of all,” Tony says, pointing at Clint. “I don’t sound like that. Second of all, I was an innocent victim of an embezzling billionaire genius. And third of all, don’t worry about it.”

Steve frowns, shifts forward in his seat.

“You unlocked your funds,” he says.

“Eh,” Tony makes a so-so motion with his hand. “In a way. I unlocked _enough_ funds, shall we say.”

“Enough to get us a new ship?” Natasha asks, now looking at Tony with interest.

“Enough to get us three new ships,” Tony says with a grin. He looks triumphant, smug, victorious. It’s all very Tony Stark, without the usual added smears of grease to enhance what an asshole he really can be. “What do you say, Cap? A ship for each of us? We can make our own fleet. But I get the biggest one.”

This is a good thing, Steve tries to remind himself. This is what they need, a new ship, and, what’s more, this is what they need right _now_. With HYDRA hovering somewhere above them and S.H.I.E.L.D. unclear in its allegiance to them, there’s no better offer than the one Tony is offering him--the chance at a new ship, a fleet of ships.

He tries to muster some enthusiasm, but he can’t help the twist in his stomach, the disappointment and loss he feels deep in his chest. He thinks maybe he’s the only one, but one look at Sam and Steve knows he’s not alone. Sam’s more careful about it, his expression more neutral, but he catches Steve’s eyes and they understand one another.

“I’m going for a walk,” Sam says suddenly. He gets up from the couch abruptly, walks out the sliding door without a second thought.

“What’s wrong with Wilson?” Tony asks, puzzled.

“You’re an idiot, Tony,” Rhodey says.

“I’ll be back,” Steve says, grateful for the opportunity to escape. He ignores the awkward, sudden tension in the room. He follows Sam toward the door, aware of Natasha’s eyes boring into the back of his neck the entire time. Behind him, Rhodey tries to explain the nuances of human emotion to Tony and Tony, for his part, seems to be very skeptical of the entire thing.

  
Sam’s waiting for him in the corridor. He’s leaning against the wall, arms crossed at his chest. The hallway is shadowy, although moonlight is streaming through one or another window. Sam’s face is half-illuminated, his eyes dark as they turn toward Steve.

Steve doesn’t say anything and Sam pushes himself off of the wall. He goes down the stairs. Steve takes a deep breath, steadies himself, and follows him down. His leg throbs with every step, but he doesn’t complain. Sam leads him through another corridor, through sliding doors and to an elevator. They get into the elevator together, still saying nothing. By the time they get out of the elevator, they’ve emerged into a large, cavernous space. The S.H.I.E.L.D. logo is engraved into the ground, black standing out against the white marble. Steve stares at it, almost unseeingly.  
  
Sam keys in an access code into an access pad and a door to their right unlocks. He makes his way out and Steve follows, into the fresh, Alfheimian night air.

   
The night is crisply cool, although the trees are laden with leaves of red, pink, and deep blue. It’s the middle of the famed Alfheim summers, scorching hot during the day, and cool to the touch at night. Alfheim’s two moons battle at different ends of the sky, lighting their surroundings well enough that they don’t require any other lights. Steve steps out from the bunker, still following Sam, down a slope and onto the banks of the lake. The two moons reflect off the dark, inky black surface.

Sam stops short and Steve does too. It takes him a full thirty seconds to will himself to look up.

When he does, he almost immediately regrets it.

“Oh,” is the only sound he can make, soft and hurt, like a punch to the gut.

 _The Avenger_ lays on its side, half submerged in the lake. There’s debris floating around everywhere, pieces of the hull, scorched titanium alloy shells lodged onto the bank and buffeting up against the ship itself. There are cuts and dents where phaser and photon blasts burned their way through. It is wreckage in some, deep sense of the word.

“Oh, Sam,” Steve says.

“I know,” Sam says. Steve can feel his own throat close with emotion, an overwhelming sense of despair that he knows Sam feels too, because he can hear it in Sam’s voice. His friend, his First Officer, the first person to come to him and offer him a purpose, a home. Now their home is grounded, its hardware nearly destroyed, everything a destroyed, ruined mess, maybe never to fly again.

“It’s all my fault,” Steve says and Sam reaches out suddenly, grabs his arm.

“Stop,” Sam says. “That’s enough. It doesn’t matter how we got here. We’re here, Steve. We’re here and that’s our ship and we have to deal with that.”

Steve exhales through his nose, sufficiently chastened.

“Okay.”

He steps forward, shoes digging into the pale, white sand. It’s only a few strides before he’s by the edge of the water, his own reflection staring back up at him, ripples from the water distorting a face that looks tired, sad. He steps into it on purpose, looks back up at his ship. _The Avenger_ glints in the moonslight, the quicksilver cast of Alfheim’s closest moon, Ljósálfr, making the ship’s titanium shell glow, while the paleish blue of Alfheim’s second moon, Dökkálfr, tints the shade before Steve’s very eyes, a trick played between the two lights, like spirits at war. The sky is inky black otherwise, the night air cool and dark, so _The_ _Avenger_ seems like a dream, a mirage that will dissipate the moment Steve touches it.

But it’s still there, even when he reached out, hand finally touching his ship, his home, as dwarfed as he is by a starship treading water. The water rises up past his waist by the time he moves through it, his pants and part of his shirt soaked through, but it’s warm even in the cool air and he has a strange thought, a kind of relief that his ship will at least not be cold, as though that makes any sense at all.

“I don’t want a new ship, Sam,” Steve says, after a while. The metal warms slightly under his touch and he moves his hand along, feeling the places where the titanium has burned, charring through the rough descent through Alfheim's atmosphere.

“Yeah,” Sam says with a sigh. He doesn’t come into the water, but he stands near the edge of the sand, hands in his pockets. “It’s nice of him, Tony, and I know we need it, but.”

“Is that selfish of m--us?” Steve asks. “We don’t have much time and Tony’s offering us a lifeline.”

“Tony’s offering to replace our memories with something flashier, shinier,” Sam says. “Because he can. Because he’s Tony and that’s what he does.”

“He loves her too,” Steve says softly. “He acts like he’s above it, but he worked harder than any of us, trying to keep her afloat. I think if we had the time and option, he’d save her.”

If there was anything left to be saved. Steve feels the melancholy settle between his ribs, a heaviness he can’t shake. In the end, the sacrifice had been made for Steve. He had chosen Bucky over the _Avenger_ , except in the process, he had robbed everyone else of her as well.

“We’ll come back for her, Steve,” Sam says. “I don’t want to leave her any more than you do.”

“Where do you we go from here, Sam?” Steve asks. “What do we do?”

“Guess that depends,” Sam says. He’s crossed his arms at his chest now, not because he’s angry or upset, but because Sam needs to do that, hold his body still, ground himself in some way when he’s thinking. It’s a coping mechanism, he had told Steve once, something he had learned in therapy a long time ago. “On who you think the enemy is.”

“HYDRA,” Steve says, frowning. “We know the enemy’s HYDRA.”  
  
“Come on, Steve,” Sam says. “No one has a fleet that big except for S.H.I.E.L.D.”

Steve feels cold suddenly, the water slushing around his middle cooler than it was a moment ago, or maybe it’s that the entire night sky is dropping down around him.

“I know S.H.I.E.L.D. isn’t perfect, Sam, but what you’re suggesting--”

“Hey,” Sam says, “I’m telling you what’s obvious and you know that it’s obvious. That wasn’t one or two rogue ships that attacked us in the Quadrant, Steve. That wasn’t a single squadron or a handful of rogue rebels. That was an _entire_ fleet. Hundreds of ships that had the technology and capacity to not only follow us into the Quadrant undetected, but to remain undetected by our devices. Nothing we have is military grade, but it’s all Stark Tech and you know as well as I do that Tony doesn’t make mistakes. Not about this.”

Steve swallows thickly, closes his eyes. He tries to think around the fog in his head, tries to process what Sam’s saying around his own allegiances, his biases blinding him. He left S.H.I.E.L.D. on purpose years ago. But he had dedicated years of his life in service, he had met some of the best people he’s ever known in that same service, some who had died for peace, others who were still there, still working, hoping that their efforts, the efforts of one person, was enough to keep another planet safe, that they were doing some measure of good. The cognitive dissonance he’s always felt around S.H.I.E.L.D. reaches a painful kind of crescendo in his head.

“You think HYDRA is S.H.I.E.L.D.,” he says finally.

“I think S.H.I.E.L.D. is compromised,” Sam says. “I don’t know the extent of it. Maybe it’s only fractured. Maybe it’s the entire goddamn thing. But Fury--”

“Not Fury,” Steve says, moving almost violently. “He wouldn’t.”

“Fine,” Sam says, a little more kindly. “Not Fury then. But someone in S.H.I.E.L.D. is compromising the integrity of the entire organization. You know it and I know it. Whoever it is has high enough clearance to siphon ships and crews into this organization without any sort of consequence. They’ve done it so effectively that no one’s noticed. Not even Fury.”

Steve lets out a frustrated growl, bangs his fist against the ship side.

“Who stands to gain by jeopardizing the entire system? It’s not perfect, but it’s not...this. It’s not untempered chaos.”

“God only knows,” Sam says with a sigh. He uncrosses his arms and then hesitates before continuing. “But you forced their hand when you took the Winter Soldier. I don’t think they meant to get discovered so soon.”

Steve frowns, runs his hand through his hair. At first he means to flatten his bangs like he used to, out of pure habit, but then he remembers they’re not long anymore.

“So Bucky’s the key. But why?”

Sam crosses his arms, casts his eyes over the lake, over their ship.  
  
“My guess, Cap?” Sam says. “Is that your friend knows who it is, whoever’s gone rogue inside of S.H.I.E.L.D. And I’d bet this person’s gonna do anything they can to stop him before he talks.”


	10. Alfheim, Pt. II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because I write in bursts and because this fic is such an enormous creative undertaking (also because I am incredibly verbose), my updates are more sporadic and I apologize for that! I've had other fic projects in between, not that that's a legitimate excuse but it is...an excuse. On the bright side, because of the aforementioned verbosity, my chapter are always stupidly long. So there is...that.
> 
> Anyway, feel free to check out some of the other fic I've posted recently and I hope you enjoy the return to this world. Thank you, as ever, for your lovely comments and for reading! ♥

By the time Steve and Sam go back in, the others have dispersed from the conference room into their own spaces. It suits Steve just as well because he’s tired and angry and wet and his leg is throbbing rather painfully, his limp even more pronounced.

“Get some rest, Steve,” Sam says after they reach the top of all of those stairs, Steve leaning against the wall to keep himself upright. “I’ll bring you something to eat. Catch a few hours of sleep and we can start making plans. Rhodey and Clint are monitoring the radio frequencies for news while we wait.”

“Thanks,” Steve says gratefully. He doesn’t want to leave his crew with most of the work and he definitely doesn’t have the time to rest, not now of all times, but he can’t deny that his body is aching and the functionality of his thought processes are limited. It’s nothing he wouldn’t instruct the rest of the crew to do, which, in fact-- “Tell everyone to rest up too, Sam. We need all injuries healed before something else unpleasant happens.”

Sam claps Steve on the shoulder carefully before disappearing in through one of the sliding doors. Steve hobbles down the hallway toward the room he emerged from and keys in the access code that Rhodey had given him (“Only you know and I know the code, Cap,” Rhodey had said, “Don’t give the Soldier the code. You know why.”). The door opens and he limps in, ignoring the door as it hisses shut.

Bucky is sitting on the bed, hand still handcuffed to the bedpost, gazing out the window. He doesn’t move when Steve comes in, but the sight isn’t any less welcome to him. The stress of their situation abates for a breath as Steve watches him, studies Bucky, his chest lightening just for being in his presence.

“You’re staring at me. Again,” Bucky says, without moving.

“Sorry,” Steve says. He takes one last look before hobbling to his own bed, easing himself down on it. His clothes are still wet, but he can’t seem to find the energy to change out of them.

“Apologies are meaningless,” Bucky says flatly. Then he turns his head so can see Steve. “You are hurt.”

“You knew I was hurt,” Steve says with a shrug.

“You said you were fine,” Bucky says.

“We just had this conversation,” Steve says.

Bucky gives him a glare that has surprisingly little heat to it.

Steve counts it as a victory because he’s too tired to count it as anything else.

“You were in the water,” Bucky says after a minute of silence.

“Yeah,” Steve sighs. “We’re grounded.”

“You give me too much information,” Bucky says.

“We both know that handcuff isn’t what’s holding you in that bed,” Steve replies, to which he can feel Bucky shift, his gaze boring holes into the side of Steve’s head. "If you wanted to hurt us by now, you would have."

“You’re stupid to trust me,” Bucky says.

“Probably,” Steve says. He lets his eyes fall closed. “Try not to kill me. I’d never hear the end of it from the others.”

It takes a few beats, but Bucky laughs, gritty and low.

“You’re a strange captain,” Bucky says, then pauses. “Steve.”

It’s the first time he’s said it, Steve’s name, and it curls somewhere in Steve’s chest, just between his heart and his rib cage. It’s dangerous, this hope he’s begun to rely on. He shouldn’t, but he can’t stop smiling anyway. He manages to lift himself up onto his elbows, damp lower body still hanging off the bed.

“Are you starting to like me?” he almost grins.

Bucky scowls.

“Don’t get carried away,” he says.

“Are we friends?” Steve definitely grins now.

“No,” Bucky glares.

“Okay, Buck,” Steve says, grin widening. “Sure, Buck.”

“I regret,” Bucky says carefully and Steve lifts his head, very briefly. Bucky glares more fiercely. “Not shooting you more.”

Steve stares at him, blinking.

Then he falls back onto the bed and laughs and laughs.

  
“If I let you out of the handcuff, will you stay where you are?” Steve asks, after a while. He sits back up in bed. His muscles are still sore, aching from exhaustion and still trying to recover from all the hits it took while the ship absorbed the different, jarring impacts, but he’s feeling slightly more energized than he was before. Energized enough to take a shower, at least. And he hates Bucky in a handcuff, hates it more than still not knowing if he can fully trust him.

“Where am I going to go?” Bucky asks dryly.

Steve gives him a look anyway. He hobbles over to the bed, unpockets the key Rhodey gave to him. The handcuff, like so much in the bunker, is old technology. New handcuffs link and unlink based on print and pressure. To a large extent it relies on wave technology. It would be stupid to be so careful otherwise and then be discovered because of a pair of handcuffs that the Winter Soldier could easily break anyway.

Steve unlocks the handcuff and Bucky pulls his hand away. He sits up in bed, rubbing his wrist, although Steve isn’t clear that he can feel anything with his bionic arm anyway.

“I’m going to take a shower,” Steve says. “Unless you need the bathroom.”

Bucky stares at him until Steve rolls his eyes, moves away.

“Sometimes,” Steve says. “It’s just easier to give a yes or a no, pal.”

“Better to say nothing at all,” Bucky says. He looks past Steve, out the window, onto the lake, and his expression is suddenly so distant and stormy that Steve thinks that maybe this he’ll leave alone.

  
The hot water feels good on Steve’s muscles, loosening the multitude of knots and sore spots he has deep across his back and abdomen. It’s only in the shower that he can fully assess the damage that _The_ _Avenger’s_ crash had wrought on his body. His leg had been punctured, of course, but he also has a large, ugly, purple bruise across his stomach, another bruise across his right side, and a dark knot on his thigh. There are a few scratches on his arms and knick just behind his ear that must have been small enough for Bruce, or the meds, not to notice, but which runs in tiny red rivulets down his neck as he showers. He scrubs away the grime with vigor and if he doesn’t emerge from the shower as a new person, then he at least emerges it with a clearer mind.

By the time he gets back into the room, he’s put on loose sweatpants and a white t-shirt and he’s running a towel through his wet hair with a smile.

“You need a shower?” Steve asks. “It’s connected to this room so we can pretend I was supervising you.”

“I need supervision?” Bucky asks. “In the shower?”

And it isn’t, it _definitely is not_ , but Steve thinks he sees the ghost of a smirk at the corner of Bucky’s lips and _it is not_ , but Steve manages a flush anyway.

“I’ll be outside the door.”

“Be inside if you want,” Bucky says, standing up. “I don’t care.”

“I’m not going to watch you in the shower,” Steve says, coloring further.

“You wouldn’t be the first,” Bucky says, definitely with a smirk this time. Steve opens his mouth to say something, but then Bucky’s expression flattens out. “Assets don’t get privacy.”

That makes Steve close his mouth, swallow roughly as he tries not to think about it, about Bucky essentially being treated as a thing and not a person.

“You’re not an asset anymore, Buck,” Steve says, softly. “Well, you are, but you’re not _just_ an asset. I’m not going to watch your every move.”

Bucky stills where he stands, near the doorway to the bathroom. He’s tense, for just a moment, then he relaxes.

“Reckless,” he says quietly. “You’re stupid.”

He disappears inside and Steve should be wary, but he can’t bring himself to care.

“Yeah,” he sighs to himself once the door closes. “Probably am.”  
  
  
By the time Bucky comes back out, sweatpants low on his waist, shirtless, running a towel cautiously through his hair, Steve’s comfortably settled into his bed. He’s sleepily watching Alfheim’s dueling moons outside the window, willing himself to stay awake just long enough for Bucky to reemerge. When he finally does, when Steve finally turns his head sees him, his thoughts come up short. He feels it, the swoop in his stomach, his throat running just short of dry. Even scarred and bruised, Bucky is a vision, all blue eyes and long hair and thickly corded muscle hovering below a wide expanse of skin. He turns his back to Steve as he faces his bed and Steve can see his back muscles flex prominently in the dim lighting, rippling faintly with each movement of his arms. Bucky finishes wiping his hair and then carefully folds the towel, places it almost delicately on the back of a chair. It would be funny to Steve, the pieces of Bucky that have survived even the Winter Soldier, if he was capable of registering anything other than this, his best friend in all of his similarities and differences, just beyond his reach.

Bucky turns back around, sits on the bed. Little rivulets of water slide down his neck, and gather in wet gauze at his chest, tinged red. Steve sits up, ignores the low heat in his belly.

“Your bandages need to be changed,” he says.

Bucky looks down at them with an unconcerned expression. “Are you offering to help?”

“If you need it,” Steve says. “If that’s okay.”

Bucky doesn’t say anything for a minute, his eyes glancing askew to the side of the room, as though calculating something in his head. His shoulders are a tense line. Then he lets out a slow breath.

“Fine.”

Steve finds the change of gauze, the antiseptic, the coolant, and the bandages in the side drawer. He stops just in front of Bucky, antiseptic and cotton pad in hand.

“Tell me if this isn’t okay,” Steve says. “Or when it becomes not okay.”

Bucky just stares up at him, cool blue eyes watching him, expectantly. There’s something about that look that’s raw, almost reckless and uncaring in the same gaze. Steve thinks he understands.

“You have a choice, Buck,” he says softly. “If you don’t want me to touch you, I won’t. Not without your consent.”

A different look flickers across Bucky’s face. Confusion, maybe, although Steve doesn’t know with regards to what--what he’s offering or how Bucky’s supposed to accept it.

“It’s okay,” Bucky breathes out through gritted teeth. “You can.”

“Okay,” Steve says. Bucky spreads his legs a little wider and Steve moves in between them, better positioning to reach Bucky’s wound.

He reaches for Bucky’s wet bandages and Bucky lifts his arms so Steve can unhook the gauze from where it’s fastened under his flesh arm. He frees it and begins unwinding it slowly, carefully, moving with the gauze, closer to Bucky when he has to unwind it from around his back, and farther away when he’s back to the front. Bucky’s breathing is steady under his hands, Bucky’s body heat warming Steve’s fingers as he works. Steve continues moving, closer and farther away, close again, pulling back again, around and around until the gauze, bright red in the same spot along the length, sits unspooled on Bucky’s lap.

Steve looks down at Bucky and Bucky’s watching him closely, his breathing calm, his breath steadily skimming Steve’s neck they’re so close. Steve watches him back, tries to read in the years he missed, the years Bucky was lost to him. There’s too much darkness in those eyes and Steve almost reaches up, almost touches Bucky’s cheek to make him real again. He remembers himself just in time, a brief, aborted movement all that he has to show for keeping himself still.

He picks up the clean cloth instead, takes the bottle of water from the side table and pours enough on to wet the cloth. He moves it gently onto Bucky’s wound, stitched shut, but still angry, red, raw, dribbling with blood. With as much care as possible, he wipes away the blood, cleans the area as best as he can and sets the cloth aside. Then he squeezes the antiseptic onto the pad, looks up at Bucky for consent.

Bucky’s still watching him, unblinking, the intensity of his gaze written onto his brows, his shoulders, the rigidity of his back.

“Yes,” Bucky says in answer.

Steve tries to be as gentle as possible, but there’s no way to avoid the pain of the antiseptic hitting the puckered flesh. Bucky, to his credit, barely moves. There’s a slight, sharp inhale of breath and Bucky’s posture become even stiffer than it was a moment ago, but other than that there’s no indication that he’s in any kind of pain.

He dabs the wound with antiseptic again and this time he must get more of it in the wound because Bucky’s flesh hand shoots out, closes tightly on Steve’s wrist before either of them can react.    

“Hey,” Steve says soothingly, stopping his movements immediately. “It’s okay. Just a little more.”    

Bucky’s fingers tighten on Steve’s wrist and the sensation is so foreign to Steve and yet so familiar, somehow, the shape of Bucky’s hand still the same, his palm a bit rougher, but still fundamentally unchanged, as though the solidity of Bucky’s hand now is laying over the phantom feeling of all of the times it had in the past, rested on Steve’s back, on his shoulder, on his arm, on his wrist, in his own hand. Bucky lets out a shaky breath and nods, pulls it away.

Steve misses it immediately, the immediate, solid warmth and the phantom feeling, their past and their present overlaid. It’s an effort to not be selfish and he only barely manages.

He applies the cotton pad again, finishes as quickly as he can and Bucky doesn’t grab him again, although he does seem to pale in pain. Steve doesn’t waste time reaching for the coolant. It’s in a metal cylinder, unmarked, but the shape of the funnel mouth is unmistakeable. He rests a hand, unthinkingly, on Bucky’s metal shoulder to steady himself and sprays the coolant on the wound. Bucky lets out another soft hiss, but this one isn’t in pain. In fact, after a moment, his face slackens and he breathes easier.

“It hurts less,” he says, almost in wonder.  

“Yeah,” Steve says, almost with a smile he doesn’t feel. “That’s the idea, bud.”

“It never,” Bucky starts and stops. He breathes, swallows, and looks at Steve. “It never hurts less. Only more.”

That hits him somewhere low in the gut, the hesitation in Bucky’s voice, an unasked question whether this could be possible--that someone would want him to hurt less, not more. Steve thinks if he starts looking, really looking, he’ll never be able to stop. He’ll never recover from the thought of what they put him through, how thoroughly they broke him, this person who once almost meant everything in the world to him.

“I want to make everything hurt for you less,” Steve says, although he’s not certain that makes sense. He’s almost speaking gibberish, he’s trying so badly to avoid the reality of the situation. His hands shake despite himself.

The Winter Soldier or not, Bucky can see right through him. He stops Steve’s wrist again, makes Steve look at him.

“Ask me,” he says. “What you need to know.”

“I don’t want to know,” Steve says immediately, forcefully. And it’s true, in a way. But it’s false in a completely different and real way, one which Bucky can read on his face. When Bucky still doesn’t let go, he finally gives in, finally falls. “What did they do to you?”

Bucky lets go of him then. He leans back onto his hands. His hair, still wet, curls to his neck, clings to the top of his scarred shoulder.

“I told you I didn’t remember,” Bucky says. “I wasn’t lying.”

“Oh,” Steve says, feeling foolish.

“I don’t,” Bucky goes on. “Mostly.”

Steve gathers his breath, steadies himself on Bucky’s shoulder again, focuses his energies on the coolant. Sprays the area again, to a soft sigh from Bucky.

“Mostly?” he asks.

“There are...blank places,” Bucky says. “Where my memories should be. I believe you. What you told me. Because it makes sense. With what I remember, sometimes. It...feels true.”

Steve’s heart stutters in his chest. He looks up sharply.

“You remember?”

“Sometimes,” Bucky says with a frown. “Not very much. Flashes.”

Steve doesn’t say anything, not wanting to get his hopes up. Flashes are better than nothing. Flashes of memory mean that they were real, that Bucky was real, that he’s in there somewhere, preserved, no matter how lost he is otherwise.

“I fell from the air skimmer,” Bucky says. “Somewhere. On a mission, maybe. It was cold and I was in pain. Someone found me. I don’t remember much.”

“Okay,” Steve says. He puts the coolant on the table, then reaches for the new roll of gauze.

“I remembered, then, I think. But they didn’t want me to,” Bucky says. He’s frowning again, staring at the ceiling as Steve comes closer again with the gauze. “Every time I remembered, they put me in a machine. It was painful. They used pain as a...weapon. When it was over I remembered a little less, every time. Maybe I didn’t want to. It was easier. One day I woke up and didn’t remember anything at all.”

Steve, who’s currently close to Bucky again, essentially embracing him as he pulls the gauze around from behind him, pauses.

“Holy shit, Buck,” he says, his voice muffled somewhere near Bucky’s neck.

Bucky shifts.

“Deprivation,” he says. “That was how they broke me. Us.”

“Us?” Steve asks.

“I wasn’t the only one,” Bucky says, dully. “But I was the best.”

Steve closes his eyes for a moment, this overwhelms him so much. _“Isn’t it annoying?”_ He remembers accusing Bucky, once. _“Being good at everything?_

“What kind of deprivation?”

“Every kind. Sleep. Food. Social. Mental.” Here he pauses, briefly. “Touch.”

Steve has heard of this, the mental destruction touch starvation can wreak. Human aren’t meant to be treated as objects, to be seen and not touched, spoken to, or loved.

“It was okay, after a while,” Bucky says. “Once you turned it off.”

Steve frowns, pulling away again, gauze around Bucky’s front.

“Turned what off?”

“Everything,” Bucky says, as though obvious. “Your thoughts. Feelings. Memories. Desires. Better to survive as a machine.”

Steve thinks it would be better not to survive at all, but he’s distinctly selfish; he’s glad to have Bucky any which way he can have him. If he could wipe it away, those years of pain, he would, but that’s not his call to make and if Bucky has earned anything in his life now, it’s the right to control his memories, to retain that which makes him _him_ , no matter which _him_ that might be.

“There,” Steve says. He pulls the gauze one more time toward the front, then hooks it into the gauze under Bucky’s flesh arm, like it was before.

“Thanks,” Bucky says. He straightens and the bandages hold.

“Hey,” Steve says. He hasn’t moved yet, still between Bucky’s legs, inches separating them. They breathe in tandem, one breath for another, and Bucky waits, watching. Steve doesn’t know how to fix this, so he makes it up as he goes along.

“I made my decision,” Steve says and it’s true the moment he says it.

“It’s a stupid decision,” Bucky says.

“Yeah,” Steve says. “Probably. But it’s mine.”

“Okay,” Bucky says.

“I’m not them, Buck. We’re not them. I’m not going to deprive you of your choice,” Steve says, softly. “You’ve earned that much.”

Bucky doesn’t look like he knows how to process this, this kindness, this unilateral gesture of goodwill, the offer of a clean slate, a chance to stay or disappear.

“I’ve killed a lot of people,” Bucky says. “Steve.”

“I know,” Steve says.

“I deserve it. To be locked up.”

“Maybe,” Steve says. “Maybe we all deserve that, to an extent. I don’t care. I’m not S.H.I.E.L.D. and you’re not my captive, Buck. I want you to make your own decision.”

“My own decision,” Bucky echoes.

It would be easy, so easy to reach forward, to touch him. To turn those blue eyes toward him, palm on cheek, thumb stroking his jaw. He’s wondered, for years, what it would have been like.

In the end, that too, isn’t Steve’s decision. That, too, Bucky has earned.

Steve steps away from Bucky, breath shaky.

“You’re free to stay or to go,” Steve says. “Just don’t kill anyone on your way out. That’s all I ask.”  

“You’re letting me go,” Bucky says.

“Yeah.”

“You won’t get the bounty,” Bucky says.

“I don’t care.”

“You should.”

“But I don’t.”

“You want me to go,” Bucky says.

And how can Steve explain it? That if he were given it, a choice, he would never lose Bucky again. But he refuses to be like them, to do to his best friend what HYDRA did to him, to rob him of what little volition he has left. If Bucky wants to leave, if he wants to disappear, that’s his choice to make.  

“I want you,” Steve says, then pauses, perhaps at an unfortunate moment. He revises his sentiment quickly. “To make that decision for yourself.”

Bucky stares at him for a while. Steve withdraws, finds his own bed, sits on it. It’s strangely cold by himself, as though just being in the same breathing space as Bucky had kept him warm. They’re not on the ship anymore, but they sit there, hands at the edges of their respective beds, feet on the ground, facing each other, postures parallel once again. It’s comforting, in a way.

“I haven’t had to make a decision in a long time,” Bucky says, finally. He lets go of the edge, eases himself down on the bed. He stares up at the ceiling.

From his bed, Steve snorts. Then, sighing, he does the same.

“Welcome to the club,” Steve says. And then after a moment, “It sucks.”

Bucky lets out a puff of laughter.

After a while, he asks, “What if I want to stay?”

Steve tries not to read into that. He ignores the steady pounding of his pulse as best as he can, which is to say, not very successfully at all. He has a lump in his throat as he stares at a spot on the ceiling, slightly less white than the rest.

“Then you have a home, wherever we are,” he says. _Wherever I am_ , Steve wants to say, because that’s all he can really promise. But he doesn’t want to add pressure where there should be none. An offer given, no strings attached.

Bucky doesn’t say anything after that. They lay there in thoughtful silence, until Steve falls asleep, somewhere adrift between hopeful and disconcerted.

  
The situation changes after that. Steve calls a meeting in the conference room and the others seem to know before he opens his mouth what he has to say.

“Before you start,” Tony says, by way of providing ease and levity in the only way Tony knows how, “I want to say we know and we want to congratulate you. When’s the wedding? Who won the pot?”

He turns to Clint and Clint jerks his head at Thor.

“Thor? Really?” Tony blinks in surprise. Thor apparently never wins anything. Thor rarely participates in the pot at all, actually, something about loyalty and also about a gambling addiction he had back in college.

“What are you talking about, Tony?” Steve asks.

“You and the Bionic Man,” Tony says, blinking. “Shacking up. Boning. Being in love. Whatever you kids call it these days.”

Steve really shouldn’t have asked. He lets out a low breath, pinches the bridge of his nose.

“Bucky and I aren’t--” he sighs. “We’re not shacking up.”

“Well,” Tony blinks at him. “Should you be?’

  
After Tony had finally shut up, courtesy of a friendly elbow to the gut from Thor, which Steve had appreciated and had made Tony double over in pain, he had told them.

“His name is James Buchanan Barnes. He and I were...friends when we were both at S.H.I.E.L.D. He was in the Strike forces and they were dispatched to Harudheen for a routine mission. He--they never came back. S.H.I.E.L.D. found some bodies, after. They never found him.” Steve’s voice is clear as he says it, but his throat is dry, flashes of memory--some of the worst of his life--flickering across his vision as he talks. “The Winter Soldier, whoever he was, it doesn’t matter anymore. They--HYDRA, tortured and brainwashed him. The things he did were out of his control. He was a prisoner of war, nothing more or less. We’ve all made decisions we’re not proud of. None of us are qualified to be judging someone else for their...ethical choices. Or non-choices.”

There’s a silence at this pronouncement and Steve bristles, puffs himself up, ready to fight for Bucky if he needed to. No one says anything, so he continues.

“I told him he’s free to go,” Steve says. “I know I promised you the bounty of your dreams. I know I risked everything for it and now I can't give that to you. I'm sorry. But he's not our prisoner and I'm not going to let anyone treat him like he is.”

He had expected outrage, anger, maybe a dangerous flash of Natasha’s eyes. What he gets, instead, is a room that’s so calm it almost seems bored. Maybe he looks more confused or surprised than he realizes because it’s Bruce, of all people, who finally breaks the silence.

“I guess we’re just waiting for the big news,” Bruce says, shifting from one foot to another. “You were going to make an announcement?”

Steve’s mouth falls open at that, probably ludicrously, because a moment later, everyone is laughing. Even Natasha has what could pass for a smile on her face. She isn't glaring disapprovingly at him a any rate.

“No offense, but you’re an idiot, Steve,” Sam grins, slinging an arm around his shoulder. “You think we didn’t see this coming? You’re twelve different kinds of predictable.”

“We spent nearly a year hunting him,” Steve says, flummoxed. He really had been expecting a fight. “He’s--was an assassin. We banked everything on him. We put _The_ _Avenger_ on the line for him.”

“ _The_ _Avenger’s_ down with or without him,” Sam says, shrugging. “What’s turning him over going to do now? And with HYDRA hunting our asses down--what, you think handing the Soldier over is going to make a difference? We’re not stupid. I mean yeah we are, but we’re not _that_ stupid. HYDRA’s not going to leave us alone just because we make the Winter Soldier Fury’s problem. We have targets on our back either way.”

“You don't have to,” Steve had said, quietly. “This is my decision, no one else’s. None of you have to be complicit in this. I’ll take full responsibility.”

“Are you kidding?” Clint says, grinning from his corner. “All that firefight for you to take all of the credit? Where’s the fun in that?”

“And we wish you to be happy, Captain,” Thor says, voice deep and kind. “If James Buchanan Barnes is what makes you happy, we would never take that from you. You have given us everything of yourself you have to give. This one thing should be yours to have and for us to help give.”

Steve feels overwhelmed, then, a distant thudding behind his eyes, a heavy, syrupy stickiness enveloping his chest. It would take years for him to pay off this gratitude, to feel this way about any other group of humans. He would die for them, his crew, in every way it was possible to, and he would never ask for anything more in return.

“I don’t have to--” he says, voice thick. Taken a breath. “I mean, I don’t deserve it. To be Captain. Everything that’s happened, it’s been my fault. That’s on me. You guys should pick someone else to lead. Someone worthy. I would follow any of you.”

“Honestly, Steve, and I say this with all of the love that is possible in my cold, shriveled heart,” Tony says. “But please shut up.”

And then he brightens. “Wait, we had a self-sacrificial martyr pot too.”

There’s a lot of grumbling as people hand their extra cash over to Sam and, mysteriously, Natasha. The ruckus gives him a chance to collect himself, to file away his gratitude for when there’s time to examine it. For now, he thinks only of his love for his crew and how they would survive this, their next steps.

Across the room, Natasha stands, mostly silent, arms folded against her chest. Steve makes his way to her, stands in front of her, hands folded, asking for forgiveness that only she can give.

Eventually even she sighs.

“Don’t look so much like a kicked puppy, Steve,” she says. “It's heartbreaking.”

“I know this wasn’t what you wanted,” he says. “I know you warned me against this.”

“Yeah, well,” Natasha breathes out. Her eyes traces the rest of the room, comes to rest on Clint. “Even I’m wrong sometimes.”

Steve looks at her then, confused.

Natasha rolls her eyes, unfolds herself from the wall.

“We’re space pirates. We didn’t sign up for job security, anyway,” she says, small hand on his bicep. “I wanted you to be smart and safe. Maybe I forgot who I was working with. Thor’s not wrong, anyway. I do want you to be happy.”

Steve’s face couldn’t mask his emotions if he tried. He envelopes her right then, in a hug, her tiny body tilted up, fitting neatly inside the circumference of his rather enormous arms.

She tenses, then encircles her arms around his waist with a sigh. Or as much as she can reach. Then, her face crumples in annoyance.

“Ugh,” she says with feeling. “I’m becoming a sentimental fool. Goddamn that Barton.”

  
There’s roof access to the bunker, Rhodey tells him, once Steve manages to extract himself from the room. Rhodey gives him the code, tells him to be careful. They’ve been given a reprieve, but they don’t know for how long. Steve takes that to heart, watches the Alfheimian night sky with care as he stands at the edge of the white roof. The lake glitters, dark and beautiful under the double moonlight. He thinks he remembers, at this moment, what the Hudson looked like, in his childhood. It had been polluted by then, far beyond what the 21st century had even allowed. In the daytime, the water was a dark, muddy brown and gave off a vague scent of chemicals, but at night it looked just like any other body of water in the dark--glittering, with ominous and beautiful possibility. He remembers looking out at the water after his Ma had gone to sleep in their small, one-bedroom apartment, wondering what secrets the water had to tell. The Hudson had kept its secrets then and the lake keeps its own secrets now.

The night air drifts across his skin, warm and gentle, ruffling his hair as it goes. He hears the door hiss open behind him. He doesn’t turn around, figuring it’s Natasha or Sam. He’s surprised when Tony slides up next to him.

“We were pretty lucky, all things considered,” Tony says. He folds his arms on top of the ledge, leans forward to get a better look at their half-submerged ship.

“Is it stupid to still hold out hope?” Steve asks.

“It’s always stupid to hold out hope,” Tony says, matter-of-factly. “It’s better to accept that bad things happen and then just stay that way.”

“I didn’t take you for a fatalist,” Steve says.

“Oh I’m not,” Tony says. “I’m a realist. There’s a difference. Realists recognize good things are possible, we’re just not stupid enough to believe they’re going to happen.”

“Why does everyone on this crew sound like Loki?” Steve frowns.

“Ha,” Tony puffs out a laugh. “I think that’s your fault.”

“My fault?” Steve turns his head toward Tony.

“You found us, Cap,” Tony says. “You put us together. You ever hear we attract the people we think we deserve?”

“Isn’t that a cliche?”

“Everything’s a cliche,” Tony rolls his eyes. “That’s not the point. The point is we’re all a bunch of cynical assholes and it’s because you’re a cynical asshole. No offense. We like you very much.”

Steve has to laugh at that. He and Tony don’t spend much time together and the older man is almost entirely more vexing than anything else, but even Tony Stark has layers.

“How’s Pepper?” Steve asks.

“Oh you know, doing the Pepper thing,” Tony says, waving a hand around in some vague gesture.

“I have no idea what that means,” Steve remarks.

“Me neither, actually,” Tony laughs. “Whenever she tries to talk business with me, I start daydreaming about robots.”

“I thought she ran Stark Industries.”

“Whatever that means,” Tony shrugs. “She’s in charge of every division that’s not frozen under the audit. I told her to take a respectable job, but something about her legacy and dear old dad’s legacy and You Can’t Just Abandon Your Inheritance, Tony.”

“What does she think?” Steve asks. He gestures in front of them. “About all of this. About you in all of this?”

Tony doesn’t say anything for a moment.

“She’s not happy about it,” he admits. “But she knows it’s something I have to do.”

“What are you looking for, Tony?” Steve asks, after a quiet minute. Tony had been an accidental acquisition to their crew. In typical Tony fashion, he had been eavesdropping in on a conversation that Steve and Sam had been having in a bar on Midgard, after having brought Natasha and Clint on board, and had decided on the spot that Steve and Sam needed The Best Engineer The Nine Galaxies Have Ever Seen. Steve and Sam had been so flummoxed at someone inviting himself into a crew of essentially space pirates that they hadn’t learned he was the infamous Tony Stark, son of the infamous Howard Stark of Stark Industries, until it was far too late.

“Same thing as you, Cap,” Tony says. “A little redemption. A little forgiveness. A sense of purpose, maybe.”

“And...Pepper doesn’t give you that? Stark Industries?”

“Believe it or not, but inheriting a company that mass-manufactured warships and phasers wasn’t always in my life plans.” The dueling moons shift behind a cloud and Tony’s face is both shadowed and illuminated for a moment. Briefly, he looks older and sadder than his years. “It doesn’t matter anyway. I still hold a majority share of the company, frozen stocks and all.”

“You’re just an adrenaline junkie,” Steve says wryly. “Just like the rest of us.”

That makes Tony shift, laugh loudly.

“That’s exactly what Pepper tells me every time we talk,” he says. He rolls a shoulder. “Hell, maybe she’s right.”

“Think she’ll ever come on board?”

“Nah,” Tony says. “She’s perfect where she is. Terrifying, actually. I think she might actually be growing the company, somehow? I don’t know how, our reputation is in the trash.”

“Don’t you miss her?”

Tony’s quiet for a minute before sighing. He turns around, back to the lake now.

“Like a missing limb. She wants me back, I know she does. But I’m not ready yet.”

“To return to Midgard?” Steve asks, curiously.

“To return to responsibility,” Tony smiles. It’s thin. He claps Steve on his shoulder. “Bless your 100 year old soul, Cap, but it’s nice to have someone else take the mantle of leader.”

Steve snorts.

“The offer is still on the table,” Tony says. He’s looking at Steve this time and he means it, his expression atypically earnest. “A fleet, all your own.”

“Bounty hunters don’t typically need fleets,” Steve says.

Tony says nothing for a moment, looking up at one of the moons.

“Technically the offer’s not just from me.”

Steve pauses, his thoughts coming to a halt.

“Tony--?”

“Rhodey,” Tony shrugs. “And Nick.”

Steve feels a little lightheaded, a little strapped for air.

“Fury?”

“The one and only.” Tony pushes off from the ledge. “He wants you back and I don’t blame him. S.H.I.E.L.D. wants you to be a Fleet Commander. You’d call your own shots, control your own system, govern your own missions. The only person you’d report to is Fury.”

“Tony,” Steve can’t believe what he’s hearing. “How do you know President Fury?”

Tony gives Steve a thin smile.

“Come on, Rogers,” he says. “I’m a Stark. You think you’re the only one with friends in high places?”

Steve can hear that tinny sound again, his heart rate picking up in swiftly accumulating anger.

“So what? Have you been a spy for him all this time? Working for us and reporting back to him?” His fists curl in on themselves before he can think.

“Whoa there. Hold on.” Tony raises both of his hands, palms up. “Don’t shoot the messenger. I’m not Fury’s lackey. I’m telling you what’s on the table. If you want to say fuck it, then say fuck it.”

“Then what?” Steve swallows the anger bubbling up through his throat. “He untied your funds so you’re here returning my generosity, no strings attached?”

“He untied my funds,” Tony says and he’s clearly getting annoyed now, “Under terms that are my own to know. I’m here telling you what he offered as a courtesy to you both. Tell him to fuck off for all I care. But the way I see it, you’re down a ship and you have textbook villains after your brainwashed sociopath of a boyfriend and Fury is offering you immunity.”

“Yeah, and at what cost?” Steve glares.

“What, you think this doesn’t come at a cost?” Tony says sharply. “Look around you, Steve. There hasn’t been a single thing you’ve done, a single thing _any_ of us have done without a cost. You’ve done a shit job balancing it so far.”

“You want me to take it,” Steve says, voice hard, arms crossed at his chest. “You want me to give up my crew, give up my freedom, to become a S.H.I.E.L.D. chess piece again so, what, Stark Industries can go legitimate again?”

“For fuck’s sake, Rogers,” Tony snaps. “Make your own decisions for once. Don’t shift the burden to me and act like this is my fault. If you want to go to S.H.I.E.L.D., go to it. No one’s going to stop you. If you want to stay here and rescue your downed ship from water damage, then do that. I don’t care. You’re not the only one who has to make hard decisions around here. Get over yourself.”

Tony pushes off the ledge in anger, the lines of his shoulders rigid. He stalks across the rooftop, jabs the access code in, and strides out. He doesn’t even get the satisfaction of slamming a door behind him, so both he and Steve are left feeling angry, wronged, and deeply out-of-sorts.

Steve shouts out in anger, punches the ledge with a fist and curses as his knuckles get scratched up. He sucks on the broken skin, licking blood where it appears.

It’s not Tony’s fault, is the most frustrating part, because he’s right. Steve has been torn between this half-life, a reality he chose because he was disenchanted with his previous, chasing a purpose that’s manifested in little more than a broken ship and a quickly scattering crew. He doesn’t know where to go from here and he’s tired of trying to figure it out. Returning to S.H.I.E.L.D., to the purpose he used to believe in, to be given the power and freedom of being Fleet Captain--well that’s something that appeals to him, that tugs at a lost sense of desire buried deep inside. And that’s why he’s angry, really, not because Tony offered him something insulting, that he would never fathom taking, but that he offered him something he wanted--something he _wants_. It’s the realization that hurts the most, the sharp and gnawing guilt that maybe, just maybe, he could leave his crew and maybe, just maybe, he doesn’t think that would be the worst thing in the world.

“Fuck,” Steve exhales, sinking to his knees. He rubs both of his hands over his face. “Fuck. You’re a fucking mess, Rogers.”

“Yeah,” a voice says sharply, clearly. Steve jolts at the intrusion, looks up to see Natasha leaning against the door, arms folded across her chest. “You are. I think it’s time we talk.”

  
*

  
They walk down to the water before Natasha breaks the silence.

“You’ve had a rough few weeks, Rogers,” she says.

Steve sighs, scrubs a hand through his hair. The cool night air chills his skin. A few yards away, _The Avenger_ sits half-submerged in the black water, taunting him with his choices.

“I guess I’m not who I thought I was,” Steve says. “It’s hard to...confront that about yourself.”

Natasha makes a small sound that could be mistaken for sympathy.

“People never have to confront the part of themselves that’s dark until something forces them to,” she says. “They’re led to believe absolutes--that people are good or they’re bad. But that’s not reality. People are sometimes good and they’re sometimes bad. We’re gradients because we love, but we’re selfish.”

“I don’t want to be selfish,” Steve says. “I--”

“Don’t be naive, Steve,” Natasha says. “It doesn’t suit you. We’re all selfish. That’s human nature. That’s the heart of self-preservation, being selfish.”

“I’ve always been told I have no self-preservation,” Steve says wryly, after a moment, and Natasha snorts.

“You don’t,” she says.

Steve sighs and sits down on the white sand. After a moment, Natasha follows.

“We’re all adults, Steve,” she says. “We’ve all made the decisions that led us here, to this moment, with each other. You included.”

Steve thinks back to a day, years ago, when Fury had given him a choice--Strike or Intel--and another day, ten years ago--a mission to Muspelheim or Harudheen. Intel had been Steve’s easy decision. Muspelheim a harder one.

He had said goodbye to Bucky that day, before Pierce’s Strike forces had departed. A hand on Bucky’s neck, an embrace that had lingered a beat too long. Bucky looking down at him, expectantly, and Steve reading that moment and choosing to wait. He had made many choices that day and in the days since. Maybe if he hadn’t lost his nerve in that moment, maybe, if he he hadn’t assumed Bucky would come home safely, maybe if he had chosen Harudheen, things would have been different. There was no way of knowing now.

“Steve,” Natasha says and her voice is soft this time. “What is it that you want?”

They sit in silence for a while before he realizes his answer.

“Not what Tony’s offering,” Steve says. “I don’t want an entire fleet. I don’t want power or a purpose, not like that. I want what I’ve made into my home. I want my family.”

That elicits a thin smile from the redhead.

“Well, consider not pushing them away then.”

Steve feels--he doesn’t know. It’s not relief, per se. But it’s not dread either. Maybe it’s content, of a sort. It’s a decision that feels right to him, after so many decisions that have felt wrong, or out of his control.

“What about Barnes?” Natasha asks, after a while.

“What about him?”

“Do you love him?” she asks, her voice gravelly in the dark. “Is he worth everything you’ve sacrificed for him?”

Steve’s throat feels dry. He watches a small, white bird peck at a pebble near the water. His lack of answer is enough for Natasha, who tucks herself into his side.

“What will you do?” she says then. “If he decides to leave?”

Steve has no real answer for that. He shrugs a shoulder.

“Survive,” Steve says. “It’s what I’ve always done.”

“You’ve never had so much to lose,” Natasha says.

“I have,” Steve says, slowly. “And I have lost it. So now--it’s all about managing expectations. My own. I gave him his freedom and I meant for him to take it, Nat, in whatever way he wants to. If I lose him again, then I lose him. But at least...this time he’ll know he has someone to return to. He’s earned his decision.”

Natasha hums, although what she means to say, Steve doesn’t really know. She takes his hand in her own and he kisses her temple.

“What about you?” Steve asks. “What do you want?”

Natasha doesn’t say anything for a moment. She tilts her head, considering.

“A cat,” she says. “To raise with Clint.”

Steve startles at that, stares at her, and she gives him a half-smile, a half-shrug.

“I like cats,” she says. “They’re assholes and I relate to that.”

Steve laughs, loudly. Natasha smiles again and this time it’s genuine.

“And revenge,” she says, eyes glinting in the twin moonlight. “For what those bastards took from us.”

“No managing expectations?” Steve gives her a half-smile.

“My expectations,” Natasha Romanoff says. “Are quite high.”  

  
*

  
Bucky--or the Winter Soldier--finds himself at his own leisure. There are no handcuffs on him anymore, no restraints, no locks or access codes to keep him confined to the room he was briefly sharing with the Captain--no, Steve. There are a few rooms he can’t access, but that’s fine. If he really wanted to break into a room, something as easy to hack and break like an access code certainly wouldn’t keep him out.

Steve is somewhere, doing something, which the Winter Soldier--or Bucky--can’t quite sense in this large, maze-like stone compound. He’s hyperaware of Steve, he’s realized. If he doesn’t hold his breath, if he doesn’t calm the pump of blood in his veins, it would be obvious--how tuned his body is to Steve, how every time Steve is in a room, Bucky is able to count, immediately, the number of breaths he takes, the number of times he blinks, the quality of his sighs, his rhythm, his ticks. Steve likely doesn’t notice how his voice drops half an octave when he’s distressed, but Bucky has. When he’s nervous, he crosses his arms and drums the fingers of his right hand on his left elbow. When he’s feeling relaxed, he touches his hair a lot. Bucky has only spent a minimal amount of time with him, but he could recognize Steve by his breathing, by his walking, by the smell and energy he leaves in the air when he enters and leaves a room. It is a hyperawareness that even the Winter Soldier is unused to--it is not out of self preservation, a need to observe and keep count of his enemy, but something else entirely. It is almost not voluntary at all.

Bucky flexes his metal arm. The functionality has mostly returned, although it shorts out briefly, every so often. It’s been like this since the discharge from the blond man’s--Barton’s--modified arrow. As for his flesh wounds--those are fine. He’s never paid much attention to flesh wounds.

Bucky isn’t given any weapons, but that almost makes him rasp out laughter. As though he needs to be given weapons to arm himself. He pockets the handcuffs in his pant pocket, breaks a glass to strap two large, sharp shards to his body, and rummages through Steve’s things to find a phaser hidden in the false bottom of a duffel bag he rescued from the ship. He straps the phaser to his abdomen, hidden under his shirt. He breathes better for it, arming himself.

He eats the toast Steve left for him, ignoring the plate of eggs and Alfheimian fruit, and drains the now-lukewarm mug of Alfheimian coffee with a wince. It’s too sweet, although there’s no sugar in it. There’s a glass of milk next to it all that he nearly ignores, but then doubles back for. He drains the glass of milk too. He has always liked the taste of milk.

Then, armed and fed enough to function, Bucky--or the Winter Soldier--leaves the room.

He passes through the hallways of the compound quietly, his feet placed carefully to mask his footfalls so that he’s like a shadow moving among the dark. A few of the doors are open and he hears conversations drifting out from one or more of them. Barton and Steve’s friend--the one Bucky had shot, Wilson--are discussing their weapons stores, specifically what they can take with them once Stark’s ships appears, Stark and his friend--the one with the serious eyes and unimpressed facial expression--are arguing about where to dock the ships and how to get them all out before HYDRA finds them, and there’s another door cracked open. Bucky pauses at this one because there are murmurs from the inside that he can sense, but can’t fully hear.

Inside, there is the giant, golden Asgardian hovering over someone who is sitting up against the headboard.

“I cannot heal if you are incessantly hovering,” the other man snaps. Bucky leans in closer to see who it is and then recoils slightly. He’s bandaged rather heavily and looks to be in some manner of pain, but Loki’s bright green eyes glitter even in the dimly lit room.

 _Ah, Soldier_ , he remembers the first time the Jotun came to his copper cage. _It is so nice to have you on board. You must have suffered an awful lot. Tell me, how does your mind feel?_

He had wanted something, Bucky was sure. What that was the Jotun had never got around to expressing, because they had been attacked by HYDRA before he could extract from the Winter Soldier what he desired. But Bucky’s been around beings like Loki before--they are addictive, like drugs, and cost twice as much. What the golden prince is doing with Loki, Bucky doesn’t know, and, frankly, doesn’t care.

“Loki, please,” the Asgardian prince pleads, quietly. “At least let me help you be comfortable.”

“I can care for myself, Thor,” Loki bristles in irritation.

Thor seems to sigh, heavily, as though this is an argument they have had time and time again. Something niggles at the back of Bucky’s mind, as though he has also had a similar conversation in the past.

“Of course you can,” Thor says. “How cruel of me to suggest otherwise. I should not ever assume you could not do something for yourself that someone could easily help you with, because they care, because they love you, and you have almost lost your life.”

“You are being dramatic,” Loki sniffs and Thor must do something, because then Loki yelps in pain.

“You were saying?” Thor sounds unimpressed.

“I do not trust these idiots to come up with a plan,” Loki says instead. “Let me up, Thor. We will all undoubtedly die if I do not get up.”

“Somehow,” Thor says drily, “I imagine we will all survive.”

“Norns, you are _unbearable_ ,” Loki says, his tone almost a whine.

“ _I_ am? You are the most annoying being in all the Nine Galaxies,” Thor says flatly.

Loki says something that Bucky can’t catch, grumbling. Then he sighs.

“Fine. I shall allow you to lay next to me.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“I am being generous, do not be spoiled,” Loki says, loftily. Thor makes a noise like he’s about to protest, but Loki cuts him off. “I will _allow_ it. But hand-things only.”

Thor snorts so much that Bucky, even from his position in the shadowy doorway, can see Loki’s features soften.

Bucky’s not quite fast enough to not see how Thor leans in, cups Loki’s face gently, as though he is something delicate, to be cherished, and kisses him. Loki protests for half a second, but even he melts under the touch, softening. Bucky withdraws after that, feeling discomfited and, perhaps, even melancholic.

  
He explores the compound as best as he can, a phantom moving through the walls and what pipes and shafts he can fit himself into. He continues hearing snippets of conversation, including Stark talking to someone on one of those ridiculous old phones, someone who causes him to soften his voice and speak almost tenderly, as he works his way through, although his senses keep stretching to find Steve. He doesn’t find him anywhere and it makes Bucky nervous in a way that makes him angry at himself. It’s frustrating, being in purgatory as he is. He can’t remember much that was erased, but he can feel it, as though the trauma he has experienced is protecting him from his memories, but his heart--or what’s left of it--can’t quite let go. 

Bucky drops from the ceiling into a room that seems to have weights and mats for training purposes. He feels at his straps as he does so, confirming that he has his weapons on his body. The worst part of being kept in that copper cage was that he had no access to his weapons when he needed them. The second worst part was that when the ship got attacked, he had no way of clawing his way to Command, to find Steve and make sure he was okay.

Not that he cared, of course. The Winter Soldier didn’t care. The Winter Soldier couldn’t care.

Fuck.

“Perhaps it is time to go,” he mutters to himself.

“That’s a decision you should have taken before he got attached again,” a voice comes from behind him and Bucky’s instincts work in overdrive, immediately. His hands are to the glass shards strapped to the inside of his arms and he hurls them at the person, who expertly and calmly ducks. They go crashing into the wall behind her, the force of impact shattering them into pieces.

“You have to move faster than that to kill me, инструктор.” Natasha looks barely fazed, her arms crossed at her chest, leaning against the doorway.

“So you do remember,” Bucky says, grinning. It’s a smile that spreads across his face, wide and cold, with teeth. It doesn’t reach his eyes and, for her part, it merely makes Natasha tilt her head to one side.

“I must admit, I wasn’t expecting you to be the famous Winter Soldier,” she says. “You were always so kind to your favorite student.”

Bucky schools his expression into blankness, doesn’t wince or react. When Natasha had come to visit him and Steve in their room, he had taken a little too long to recognize her. It had been years since he had seen the angry, bitter, broken, beautiful little балерина. She had let her fiery red hair grow longer. Her green eyes glitter coldly, but he could recognize something there that he hadn’t before--redemption, maybe, a softness he couldn’t explain.

“You are far from home, _pchelka._ ” His little bee, with a sting sharper and more deadly than any other he had been forced to train.

“Depends on how you define home,” she says. She’s studying him closely and, somehow, she’s unreadable to him now.

“How long has it been?”

“Eight years, ten months, and forty three days,” Natasha says.

“You kept count?”

“It’s important to keep track of how long it takes to repay someone for destroying your life,” she says.

“Are you here to destroy mine in exchange?”

Natasha’s face becomes even stonier than before, her eyes sharp and full of unmistakable loathing. It’s not a personal thing and Bucky knows that. She looks away.

“I can’t,” she says. “You mean a lot to someone who means a lot to me.”

Bucky doesn’t mean to swallow. He doesn’t mean for that to actually resonate with him, somewhere deep, somewhere he cannot reach. He lashes out instead. The best way to defend is to hit back fast and hard.  

“Or is it that you still love me, little bee?”

Natasha snorts.

“Don’t flatter yourself. They have a word for what I went through,” she says. “Stockholm Syndrome.”

“I wasn’t your captor.”   

“Yes, well,” Natasha says. “It’s hard to tell when you’re eighteen and someone’s breaking your body and mind without your consent.”

They stare at one another, distant and disapproving, both bound and scarred by powers beyond their control. There’s a part of Bucky that’s still the Winter Soldier, the Зимний солдат, the Instruktor, the Asset. It’s a reckless, dangerous, uncaring part of himself, a part meant to destroy, a part that wishes to taunt and inflict as much pain as was inflicted upon him.

But then, there’s another part of Bucky he’s recovering now, a part he had lost for years. A part that remembers Steve’s blue eyes as they watched him with unguarded caring, a foreign and familiar body that pressed against him on a bed, heedless of how Bucky could have killed him with both eyes shut.

He sighs, rolls his shoulder. It’s always aching, likely under the weight of the metal arm.

“I’m sor--”

“Don’t,” Natasha cuts him off, almost furiously. “Don’t say what you don’t mean. Don’t insult both of us like that.”

“I didn’t ask to be captured,” Bucky says then, instead, frustrated. “I didn’t ask. To be let free.”

“But you did,” Natasha says. “And you were.” And then, abruptly. “What do you remember? Who were you?”

 It takes Bucky an entire minute to answer.

“I don’t know,” he admits.

“You lied to us, then,” Natasha says, words like acid. “You said you were no one.”

“I am no one,” Bucky says. “I was nothing.”

“Do you believe him? Do you believe Steve?”

“Yes,” Bucky says, after another pause. “What he says...makes sense. It fits. Everything else is black.”

“You remember more than you’re admitting,” Natasha says, scrutinizing him.

And she always was so astute, his little bee. Maybe he didn’t recognize her at first, but he remembers his hands around her neck, her gasps as he almost strangled her. She hadn’t listened to them and he had been instructed to dispose of her. He had let her go instead, a sudden flash of memory when he looked into her scared, defiant green eyes and saw, briefly, blue. She had escaped then and he had let her. He had never heard from her again. She had been the most talented agent, the best spy and hacker the Red Star had ever trained. The Winter Soldier had been sufficiently, brutally punished in exchange.

“I don’t want him to get his hopes up,” Bucky says. He looks away from her. The itch is there, under his skin. He doesn’t belong here. He’s a danger, to himself, to the members of the _Avenger_ ; to Steve. He doesn’t remember him fully, but he remembers the feeling of caring for him. He thinks maybe still does. “He would take it too far.”

“You owe him the truth, Barnes,” Natasha nearly growls. “He’s lost everything for you.”

“I didn’t ask him to,” Bucky glares at her. “I told him to turn me in. I told him to get his bounty.”

Natasha stares at him and then laughs at that.

“You expected Steve Rogers to hand you in. To sacrifice you for himself?”

“I thought maybe he had changed,” Bucky says with a barely repressed sigh. “I hoped for him to change.”

“You’re lucky he didn’t,” Natasha says. “We all are.”

“Yes,” Bucky says and he feels nauseous. He flickers back and forth between Bucky Barnes and the Winter Soldier. Sometimes, he’s something in between. He remembers more than he admits to Steve, but it’s still not enough.

He remembers, briefly, an embrace that had lingered a beat too long, hands in his hair, bright blue eyes looking into his own. _I’ll see you when you get back, Buck_ , he had said. There had been no question about it at the time, that Bucky would come back to him.

“Whatever decision you make, you need to make it soon,” Natasha says. “If you break his heart, I’ll kill you.”

This is what Steve deserves; what he’s always deserved. Friends, family, who would kill before they let someone else hurt him. Maybe the Winter Soldier wouldn’t, but Bucky, or whoever he is now, would let her. Would even insist on it.

“I have to leave,” Bucky says. “He deserves better.”

Natasha snorts and unfolds her arms from her chest at last.

“That is a coward’s excuse, _mishka_. It is selfishness wrapped in the guise of care, which is the most selfish act of all.”

“It’s not an excuse,” Bucky says. “I am HYDRA property. They will burn planets down before they let me free.”

“As long as you’re with Steve, he won’t let that happen.”

“Then HYDRA will kill him too,” Bucky says, frowning deeply.

“He promised you freedom,” Natasha says. “He’ll sacrifice himself before he disappoints you.”

“He is stupid,” Bucky says. “He is too honest and trusting and stupid.”

“Yes. He is the best of us,” Natasha says and this time it’s soft. Then she straightens. “If you’re going to leave, then leave. But never ever come back.”

The door opens behind her and closes with a soft whirr as she leaves.

That, Bucky can do. He can disappear, into thin air, like a ghost. Indeed, it’s the only thing he’s ever been truly good at, other than--hm, killing people.

  
*

  
By the time Steve gets back to his room, he’s exhausted, but thinking straight.

  
After his conversation with Natasha, he had gone to find Sam. He had found his First Officer looking over intelligence reports with Rhodey in the conference room.

Sam had looked up at him and the brief glance between the two of them had told him what he needed to know. He couldn’t stop the grin from spreading over his face, had sat up straight in his chair, leaned toward Steve.

“Well it’s about time, Cap,” Sam had grinned widely.

“There’s only one way this ends,” Steve had said. “With HYDRA dead and decapitated at Nick Fury’s feet.”

Sam had laughed at that and Rhodey had rolled his eyes.

“You all really have a flair for the dramatic, don’t you?” he had said, but, as Tony Stark’s best friend of decades, he had hardly been fazed.

“You got a plan, don’t you?” Sam had nodded toward Steve.

“Something like that,” Steve had said, a half-smile, half-apologetic grimace ghosting at the corner of his lips.

“It’s something stupid isn’t it?” Rhodey had asked.

And it was just a testament to what a reckless, headstrong group of stubborn, thrill-seeking assholes they all were that Rhodey had only needed to spend the better part of a week with the crew of _The Avenger_ to understand them all so thoroughly.

  
His head is buzzing with the blurry details of the plan, with the adrenaline that comes from having decided on a course of action, no matter how brash or suicidal. First things first, Steve has to make contact with S.H.I.E.L.D., explain their situation to Fury.

He’s halfway to shrugging out of his shirt when he stops, the hairs at the back of his neck standing on edge. He tugs his shirt back down and slowly looks around the room. There’s a stillness here that doesn’t quite belong.

“Bucky?” Steve calls out, as though Bucky might be in the bathroom, although there’s no sound of running water or anything else from within.

Bucky has authority to roam the compound freely now, but this feels different than that. This doesn’t feel as though Bucky’s left the room to go to the kitchen; it feels more permanent. Steve looks over at Bucky’s bed and the gauze he had used to re-wrap Bucky’s wounds earlier is neatly wrapped again, placed in the middle of the bed with a scrap of paper and a pair of handcuffs.

Steve’s head spins and he almost stumbles to the bed in his haste to pick it up.

 _Thanks. Sorry._ is all it says and Steve has to take a moment to swallow, the sudden disappointment thick on his tongue. He knew this was a possibility, but he didn’t even get to say goodbye. Then he notices something scrawled on the back.

_If you cut the head off the serpent, another grows back. You have to cut out its heart and burn it._

And then, near the bottom:

_Don’t be stupid._

The words, ominous and with no context, make little to no sense, at first. Then, something clicks.

“Fuck,” Steve breathes to himself as he processes, a second too late, what’s happened. “God damnit, Buck. _Fuck._ ”

He folds the paper and tucks it into a pant pocket. He digs through his duffel bag hastily, pries back the false bottom to grab his phaser and--it’s gone.

“ _Fuck_ ,” he swears again and then he’s stumbling to his feet and out the door. “ _God damnit, Bucky._ ”

He pounds down the hallway of the compound, ignoring the pain throbbing in his slowly healing leg. He manages to take the stairs down two at a time, runs across the room at the bottom, and hurtles around another corner--only to nearly collide with someone.

“Sam,” he gasps out, grabbing his friend’s arms.

“Steve, what--”

“Bucky,” Steve grits out. “He’s gone.”

Sam spares a moment to shoot him a look of sympathy.

“Steve, you knew this might be the choice he makes. You gave that to him--”

“No, you don’t understand,” Steve says and he’s pale in the dappled moonlight of the hallway, panic and frustration clear on his face. “He didn’t just leave. He’s gone to HYDRA. To turn himself in.”

“What?” Sam ogles at him. “Why would he--”

“He thinks he can take them out that way,” Steve says. “He’s going to try to destroy them from the inside.”

“Fuck,” Sam swears. “Fuck, that’s a stupid as shit idea. He’s one person and they’re an entire organization. An entire psychotic, soulless, piece-of-shit organization that still has the equipment to _brainwash_ him.”

“We have to find him,” Steve says. His grip on Sam has tightened so much that Sam winces. Steve lets go, apologetically.

“There’s no surveillance equipment here, Steve,” Sam says. “If we want to stop him, we’ll have to find him ourselves. I’ll ask Rhodey what the area looks like, what routes he could have taken.”  

“Thanks, Sam,” Steve says, swallowing thickly, trying to keep his thoughts in order. “Tell the others.”

Sam gives him a somber nod and turns on his heels down the hallway and up the stairs. Steve stares after him for a half second before pounding down the hallway and out of the compound.  
  
  
There’s no sign of him outside. The compound is quiet, the insides soundproof enough that any hint of life is masked in a serene calm and silence that Steve, personally, can’t remember the last time he felt. There’s a slight breeze that rustles the black water and the trees, but there’s no other movement that Steve can see, not even small animals.

Steve’s blood is pounding in his ears and he tries not to think that maybe he got to the note too late, that maybe Bucky’s actually been gone for hours now. He takes a breath and tries to orient himself, think through it rationally.

Bucky couldn’t have gotten far, not without some sort of vehicle. He also has no way of contacting HYDRA without any functioning communication device. If he’s going to turn himself in, if he’s risking himself for Steve and the others, he wouldn’t also risk turning one of their devices on where it could be traced back to the compound. That only leaves one option--

Steve skirts the lake and runs toward the growth of trees Rhodey had indicated to them during the meeting. They were distinguishable only by the unusual pattern of the trees in the front--exactly one blue, one purple, one pink, and one yellow, standing side by side. Behind and through the trees is a clearing where S.H.I.E.L.D. had commandeered an old air hanger from local Alfheimians for flight practice. Bucky must have been listening to their meeting, undetected, because Rhodey had told them there were still four airpods left over from when the base was functioning, and at least three of them, he was certain, still worked.

Steve makes his way through the trees, ignoring the branches slapping against his skin and the underbrush picking at his feet, and sees a flash of something open the door to the hanger as he breaks into the clearing. It gleams silver in the moonslight, a metal arm.

“Bucky!” Steve shouts. “Bucky, _stop_. This is _stupid_.”

The movement at the door stills for a moment and then it slams shut.

“You stubborn bastard,” Steve pants as he races across the greenery toward the hanger. He manages to open the door just as Bucky’s opening the door to the pod. It seems charcoal grey in the dark and large, large enough to fit at least two or three people inside.

“Leave me alone, Steve,” Bucky growls back at him. “You gave me a choice and I made it. It’s _mine_ to make.”

“This is _stupid_ , Buck,” Steve says. “You’re _one_ person.”

“I’m the Winter Soldier,” Bucky’s voice is dense, full of gravel. “You don’t know what I can do. You think you do, but you have no idea.”

“They _want_ you back, you self-sacrifical asshole,” Steve’s voice is growing louder as his frustration grows too. “I might not know what you can do, but _they_ do. They’re the only ones. Don’t you think they’ll use that against you?”

“Don’t care,” Bucky grunts and lifts a foot into the cock pit. “My decision.”

“I’m not going to let you go,” Steve says. He’s getting angry now. He’s frustrated, he’s tired, he’s stubborn, and he’s _angry._ “I’m not going to let you kill yourself for us--”

“Why, because you didn’t get to first?” Bucky replies after a moment and the question is so flat, is so pointed and furious that Steve nearly reels from it. “It’s okay for you to be stupid? For you to sacrifice for me? When I didn’t ask you to?”

“It’s not like that,” Steve says, but Bucky’s words are as true as they are brutally observant. Steve has a hero complex a lightyear wide and it’s selfish, whether or not he ever chooses to admit it.

“Yes, it is,” Bucky says, unimpressed. He lifts himself up, ready to get in. “Let me go, Steve. That person you knew--I’m not that person anymore. I’m not anyone or anything anymore. HYDRA took that from me. Revenge is all I have.”

“It’s not,” Steve says, his throat drying. “It doesn’t have to be.”

Bucky laughs at that, cold and ugly.

“You should talk to our little _pchelka_ ,” he says. “She will tell you how wrong you are.”

“Buck--”

“Goodbye, Steve,” Bucky says. It’s too dark in the hanger to see Bucky’s face, but his voice is quieter now, maybe a breath softer. “Maybe in the next life.”

Bucky gets into the pod and slams the door shut beside him. Steve watches him, helplessly, opens his hands and curls them into fists, but he’s powerless. There’s nothing he can do from here. He can get into another pod, sure, can follow Bucky up and out of Alfheim, toward HYDRA. He can link their comms, try to convince him otherwise--but that would accomplish what? He has a plan; they’ve all made a plan. He can’t throw it away again, he can’t disappoint his crew like that again.

He watches Bucky as he straps in to the pilot’s seat, watches him as he works out the controls with ease. Steve opens his mouth. Bucky can’t hear him. He’s not even looking at him. Steve doesn’t know what to say, but he opens his mouth anyway, unwilling to let this be their end, determined to try--

That’s when the sirens go off.

That’s when he hears the first explosions.


	11. Flight, And Fight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In a move that should shock no one that is following this fic with any sort of diligence, here is yet another absurdly long chapter. I may be biased, but I think it's a good one!
> 
> Also with this chapter, this fic hits......100K. I have no idea how. My friends keep teasing me that space gays will never end and at this point...they might not be wrong. My only hope is that I'm not writing into a void and there are actually people out there reading this unnecessarily long and complicated tale of space husbands! I promise not to abandon this fic halfway through if you promise to share with your friends if you're enjoying it! :)

**[  IMPORTANT BULLETIN FROM THE S.H.I.E.L.D. SYSTEM  ]**

 

 

> This is an urgent and important bulletin from the S.H.I.E.L.D. Protective System of the Intergovernmental Planetary System. S.H.I.E.L.D. Strike Forces are urgently looking for the following inter-galaxy criminals on charges of: kidnapping, smuggling, extortion, property destruction, harboring a dangerous and known fugitive, subverting the current governing structure, inspiring mass chaos and anarchy, harming a royal dignitary, illegally targeting and destroying other S.H.I.E.L.D. ships, illegally entering planetary atmospheres without clearance, murder, and treason.

> The following individuals are armed and extremely dangerous. They command a ship known as The Avenger. Reward for individual capture is $$10,000,000 each. Reward for capture of their captain, Steven Grant Rogers, is $$50,000,000. Reward for capture of the individual known as James Buchanan Barnes is $$100,000,000.
> 
>  
> 
>  
>
>> **[Captain]** _Rogers, Steven Grant_  
>  Barnes, James Buchanan  
>  Banner, Robert Bruce  
>  Barton, Clinton Francis  
>  Laufeyson, Loki  
>  Odinson, Thor  
>  Romanova, Natalia Alianovna  
>  Stark, Anthony Edward  
>  _Wilson, Samuel Thomas_
> 
> If you see any of these individuals or have more information that could lead to the capture of these dangerous criminals, contact S.H.I.E.L.D. immediately.

 

Steve watches the bulletin flash out in bright, desperate letters, accompanied by a shrill sound that pierces both thought and conscious. He tugs his hood up self-consciously, watches as his face and the faces of his crew members flash across the holographic screens. There are scenes to complement the rotating profile pictures: the King of Vanaheim getting shot from a roof that Steve and Sam are standing on, a blurry battle between seeming S.H.I.E.L.D. ships and another one deep in the Negative Quadrant, the second firing back at the S.H.I.E.L.D. ships indiscriminately, the Winter Soldier being taken in by Sam and Clint, _The_ _Avenger_ crashing through Alfheim’s atmosphere, Steve shooting multiple Blonde Giants in Nidavellir. If Steve had just been watching the alert as a neutral viewer who didn’t know any better, he would think this group was out of control, dangerous with no limitations. A group of armed and chaotic fugitives. He would think that they deserved S.H.I.E.L.D. capture and S.H.I.E.L.D. justice.

He almost snorts knowing, now, there is no longer such a thing.

“C’mon,” a voice says to his right and he feels the press of a cool hand at his elbow. Steve tears his eyes away from the screens and looks at the person next to him. Bucky has his hair pulled back, under a hat, a dull, olive green jacket pulled on that hides his arm. Steve can’t see his face, but his jaw is tight.

“Okay,” Steve says, exhaling. “She’ll be waiting for us.”

   
*

He hears the explosions dimly at first, then louder, more immediate, multiple of them in a row. The noise ricochets through the trees, hits the metal walls of the hangar, destruction reverberating in his ears until he has to cover them to gain some semblance of focus.

“The compound,” Steve breathes out in horror and he shoves open the door to the hangar, stumbling out before, suddenly, an arm grabs him by the back of the jacket and drags him back inside.

He tries to elbow whoever it is with their hands on him, struggling against a grip he can’t shake. “What the _fuck_ . Let me _go._ ”

“Don’t be an _idiot_ ,” Bucky grinds out. “We have to go.”

Steve stops struggling and Bucky nearly physically drags him back to the pod and shoves him in.

“I can’t let leave them, Bucky,” Steve says urgently and he’s trying to get out of the pod again. Bucky uses his metal arm to shove Steve back into his seat. Steve’s head bounces off the headrest. It’s hard enough that black splotches burst into his vision.

“What are you going to do?” Bucky growls, leaning toward him. “They found you. HYDRA is bombing your base. If you go back now, you’ll get yourself killed.”

“They’re my _crew_ ,” Steve snaps back.

“They’re probably _dead_.”

“ _Move_ , Barnes,” Steve growls. He shoves out of the seat and past Bucky. He shoves himself out of the pod and to the ground, starts running the moment his feet hit the concrete. Behind him, he hears Bucky hit the metal of the pod out of frustration and anger. If he follows him, Steve couldn’t say.

He tears open the hangar door and has to shield his face from the wave of heat that assaults it. There are a ring of trees that have caught fire not too far away. Steve pushes himself through the copse in front of him and emerges onto the green by the lake. To the right of him, a part of the compound has caved in, black charring the previously pristine white stone. A fleet of ships spread out across the night sky above him and he curses as they continue to take photon shot after photon shot, dropping bombs and missiles atop the compound.

He pales and is on the verge of doing something utterly _stupid_ , when Bucky finds him again, grasps his arms and pulls him back.

“ _Let go_ ,” Steve shouts and even as he’s fighting Bucky to get free, he sees at least three shapes emerge from the back door. “ _Sam!_ ”

Sam has his arms over his head, bent low, and he’s running out of the ruined compound with Natasha and Clint at his heels. HYDRA drops another bomb and the air lights up in a bright white, blinding Steve. He tries to blink through it and finally struggles free from Bucky’s grip. He meets Sam, Natasha, and Clint halfway. Natasha’s limping, gasping as she tries not to put too much pressure on a leg that Steve can clearly see is burned and bloody. Steve doesn’t stop to think, he just scoops her up into his arms, and another Alfheim-wrecking explosion shatters the air. A piece of the compound breaks off, debris flying through the air, and the four of them have to run, shielding themselves from the onslaught of sharp edges and heavy stone.

Natasha clutches to his neck and Steve nearly stumbles as he trips over a piece of debris, but Bucky drags him back, steadies him, and the five of them hurtle through the same copse of trees that Bucky and Steve had come out of. The trees are now all lit up, bright, multicolored leaves all burning the same fiery orange-red, the air around them thick with smoke, suffocating them as they struggle through.

Finally, after what seems like years, but is really only a few minutes, they emerge on the other side of the trees, back to the clearing with the hangar. Above them, HYDRA ships continue to spread out.

“Where’s the others?” Steve wheezes, coughing through the acrid smoke. They reach the hangar door and Bucky wordlessly shoves them open. Clint stops to help Natasha after Steve lets her down, but Sam follows after Bucky.

“Tony was the first one who noticed something wasn’t right,” Natasha says. She’s wincing in pain, her voice coming out harsh and uneven. She has her arm around Clint now, who’s helping her hobble to her feet. “He was monitoring something on untraceable sensors and they all went off at the same time, about a minute before the first bomb hit. He and Rhodey ducked into another room for something. I don’t know about Thor and Loki.”

“They knew about the plan,” Clint says. He’s gasping too. He’s not injured in the same way that Natasha is, but there’s something clearly wrong. He winces, takes a breath, and turns his head left to right and then back again. “Does anyone else have a ringing in their ear?”

Natasha looks at him with concern, although none of them have the time for it.

“Thor knows where the hangar is,” Sam says.

“We can’t leave him--” Steve starts, but there’s another resounding explosion that tears through the air. He pales; they all do. If there’s anyone left in the compound--well, there’s unlikely to be any compound left at this point, let alone anyone inside of it.

“We have to go, Steve,” Sam says. He looks apologetic, but firm. He’s assumed his position as First Officer and Steve knows that he’s right, but he also knows that there’s no way he can leave without Thor and Loki.

“Clint, help Natasha inside, Bucky has a pod--”

“We can’t all fit in one, Steve,” Natasha says. Her breathing is becoming heavier, more labored as the pain of her burn starts spreading. Adrenaline can only hold pure pain back for so long.

“I started the other,” Sam says. “You two go, we’ll catch up.”

“Now’s not the time for your hero complexes,” Natasha snaps, although the force of her anger is lost as her voice fades. She’s so pale, she’s nearly translucent in the moonslight. She sways on her feet dangerously.

“Let’s go, Nat,” Clint says gently, firmly. “They know what they’re doing.”

Steve looks at her, watches the way she holds herself, strong, unbreakable, even when she’s on the verge of collapse. He wraps a hand around the back of her neck, kisses her forehead.

“We’ll see you on Harudheen,” he says, a promise.  
  
“Don’t do anything stupid, Steve,” Natasha says, gravel in her voice. “Promise me.”

“We’ll see you soon,” Steve says, which is a promise in the same breath that it isn’t one. Natasha’s eyes flash because she is not stupid enough to be unaware of this, but she’s too hurt and the air is too thick with ash and there’s no time left. She lets Clint guide her away. The two of them hobble into the airpod that Sam had started. The roof to the hangar starts to slide to the side.

“Where is Loki?” Steve says, turning to Sam. “Thor won’t leave him.”

“The last I saw them, they were in the compound,” Sam says, nodding his head in that direction with a worried look. Sam’s not stupid by any means and his hero complex is nowhere near Steve’s, but he’s a good First Officer, a loyal captain in his own right. He’s practical, but like Steve, he would risk everything to make sure no man of his got left behind.

“We have to go back for them--” Steve says as Clint and Natasha’s airpod take flight. The HYDRA ships above start to spread out wider, coming closer to where the hangar is hidden with every minute that passes. They only have a little bit of time before the entirety of airspace will be taken and they’ll be left with no escape route at all.

The HYDRA ships start shelling the space in front of the compound. They’re not seeking to take any prisoners. A dead Winter Soldier, apparently, is just as favorable to them as a live one--at least a live one that’s outlived its programming.

Behind them, Clint and Natasha pull away. The other pod makes a low humming noise, ready to do the same.

Sam presses a phaser to Steve’s chest and the two of them battle through the dangerously swaying trees back toward the lake. They’ve barely emerged when they see a ship descend from the Alfheimian sky. It stops dead in the air, in the space in front of the burning, ruined compound.

“Someone’s coming out,” Sam says, a hand on Steve’s shoulder, as though to keep him in place.

Steve watches, transfixed, as a pale blue light appears beneath the ship, a familiar crunching sound somehow grinding through the other noises battling for dominance in the thick night air. A moment later, a person appears on the grass. He’s large, thickly muscled, strapped with a vest, a phaser rifle attached to his back and another in his hands. His dark hair is cropped short and there’s scarring on one side of his face. He moves toward the compound aggressively, with heavy steps, the movements of a hunter after cornered prey.

That’s when Steve sees Thor stumbling out of the half-shattered side door. The man hears the noise and turns toward Thor, a grotesque grin spreading across the tight skin of his scarred face. Thor’s hair is matted across his forehead with streaks of grime and something dark red. He’s holding his arm awkwardly and he’s bleeding from his side.

Steve has half an ill-conceived second to reconsider before he lifts his phaser and shoots.  
  
  
Three things happen at once--

First, Thor takes the distraction to hurtle toward the hit HYDRA man.

Second, the man growls, lifts his own rifle and shoots Steve square between the eyes.

Third, the man lets out a piercing scream as his right arm vaporizes.

  
No--four things happen.

Fourth, Steve feels himself get knocked to the ground. He hears a pained, shocked grunt beside him as Bucky takes the phaser shot, meant for Steve, to the spot right above his heart.

   
*

  
“Stop looking at me like that,” Bucky gripes. He’s breathing better than he was a day ago and his burn shot is nearly all healed, thanks to a bottle of extra strength coolant Sam had found in a compartment in the pod. Also probably due to whatever conditioning and experimentation HYDRA had conducted on him over the last ten years, ironically.

  
The details were all rather fuzzy now--the screams of the man Bucky had later identified as Rumlow, Thor limping to them, Steve and Sam dragging Bucky back to the hangar just before the rest of the trees went up in flames, somehow lifting his body into the airpod with the help of an injured Thor, shuttling out of the area before the HYDRA ships could piece together what had happened to Rumlow and where their targets had gone.

Sam had maneuvered the pod out of the hangar’s open roof while Steve had ripped open Bucky’s shirt and sprayed half of the coolant onto the charred skin. He still can’t get the image out of his head--Bucky’s pale face, twisted in pain, his chest barely rising and falling with labored breath, a sheen of sweat spread thin over pallid skin. There were signs that he was alive and signs that he might not be for too much longer.

  
“You took a phaser shot to the chest,” Steve says. He’s tugging his hood over his easily-recognizable blond head again. He tries not to make obvious how much those words cost him. “For me.”

“Stop being melodramatic,” Bucky says. He pulls his hat low and checks around the corners from them. They’re only a few blocks from the meeting point, but a lot can happen in a few blocks.

Steve reaches out, a hand on Bucky’s arm to stop him. Bucky stops, looks distinctly annoyed. He’s been having more expressions now, although Steve doesn’t think he’s noticed. In addition to blank, unconcerned, and disinterested, he now also manages annoyed, angry, unimpressed, exasperated, and, when he’s not careful, even a fleeting look that could be mistaken for concern.

“What.”

“You stayed,” Steve says.

“So.”

“You came back for me.”

“Stop.”

“You saved me.” Steve looks at Bucky with unconcealed gratitude, awe, and something more, maybe. Bucky scowls, then looks uncomfortable.

“Stop actively trying to die,” he says and turns away again. He shrugs Steve’s grip off and pats himself down. He does this often, like a tick--making sure he still has his weapons on him.

“Rumlow,” Steve questions. “Who was he?”

“Some dick,” Bucky says with a grunt.

“You vaporized his arm.”

“Yeah.”

“He’s probably dead now.”

“Good,” Bucky says grimly. He nods toward a narrow street that winds off to their right. “This way.”

“Where did you get it? What was it?”

Bucky shrugs and jogs to the corner.

“It was in the hangar. Haven’t seen it before. Probably a weapon S.H.I.E.L.D. was hiding.”

Steve frowns at that. S.H.I.E.L.D. obviously had contracts with weapons developers and arms dealers, but that vaporizer -- it was unlike anything he’s ever come across before. The potential it holds is dangerous and unbelievable in a way that even phaser rifles can’t parallel. Maybe not even photon blasters.

“What did you do with it?”

“Broke it,” Bucky says. “Shouldn't exist.”

Steve is about to say something else -- even opens his mouth to do so -- when Bucky clamps his metal hand over Steve’s mouth. It feels cool and heavy against his lips.

“Shut up,” Bucky hisses and Steve sees why a second later.

Down the street from where they had just crossed were four black-clad S.H.I.E.L.D. soldiers, rifles strapped to their fronts. They were talking into their comsets and the command crackled back loud and clear over the line. Steve and Bucky stay immobile, plastered quietly against the side of the nearest building inside the mouth to the connected street.

“If you see them, shoot them on sight,” a voice is barking, commanding. “They’re dangerous and resourceful and will use whatever means to escape. Do not take them prisoner, just shoot. Except for Rogers and Barnes -- if you see them, bring them in. Incapacitate, but do _not_ kill them. The General has other plans for them.”

S.H.I.E.L.D. has all soldiers and officers armed and patrolling the streets for them. The alert had gone out to every planet in the Nine Galaxies, their pictures, briefings, and all. Each planet was under mandatory curfew while S.H.I.E.l.D. searched intergalactically for the dangerous fugitives.

The soldiers mutter to one another and pass the intersection without incident.

Bucky slowly lets go of Steve and the two of them look at one another warily.

“Come on,” Steve says after a moment. He moves out of Bucky’s way, more than ready to finish crossing to the meeting location, when he hears two sets of feet behind him.

“You two--” one of the soldiers starts and before Steve can react, Bucky has his flesh hand in Steve’s hair, his mouth on his.

Steve freezes in thrill and shock for only half a beat before he reacts, curling one hand onto Bucky’s neck, the other into the front of his jacket.

Bucky moves his lips against Steve’s, lets his eyes fall closed, and it looks like they’re enjoying an intimate moment, but Steve can feel the word against his mouth.

He lets out a low moan, as instructed, and Bucky tugs him closer. Steve crowds him against the wall of the building behind and a second later, he feels a hand snake onto his ass. He’s lightheaded, dizzy, and Bucky must feel it -- the warmth of the flush rapidly spreading across the back of his neck.

“Nevermind,” one of the soldiers chuckles.

“They’re not listenin’ to you anyway,” the other one snorts.

The two laugh to each other and one of them even lets out a low wolf whistle before they back away and depart.

Bucky and Steve stay like that -- tangled and kissing -- for a few beats longer, both making sure the soldiers are completely gone, with no others approaching, before finally pulling apart.

When they do, Steve is slightly out of breath and flushed and he can’t help but look at Bucky, dazed. Bucky’s lips are slightly pinker than usual and Steve can’t stop from glancing down at them, despite himself.

For his part, Bucky seems to not be aware at all. He absentmindedly licks his lips, his head cocked to the side, carefully listening.

“Okay,” he nods to Steve. “Let’s go.”

Steve manages to stop gaping and untie his tongue long enough to force out a “Yeah.”

Bucky turns away from him and they carefully make their way down the mostly clear street. Bucky says nothing more -- doesn’t even acknowledge what they just did -- but Steve swears, he _swears_ , that he sees the hint of a smug smirk on his face as he walks.

  
*

  
Somehow, in the midst of Bucky hissing, Thor bleeding, and Steve panicking, Sam had managed to fly the pod out of the hangar.

“Tony, Rhodey, and Bruce,” Steve grinds out as he’s applying the coolant liberally to Bucky. He’s managed to drag him to the back of the pod, laying him across two seats since there’s no room to actually lay down.

“I did not see them inside,” Thor says through gritted teeth. He’s in a seat near the window, shrugging out of his burned and torn jacket and peeling off his bloody shirt. He’s breathing shallowly, his burns and wounds obviously bothering him.

“Thor,” Steve says, looking up, mid-spray and Thor shakes his head.

“Take care of him,” Thor says. “I will be okay.”

Steve turns his attention back to Bucky, guilty and grateful. Bucky looks so pale, he’s turning greener by the second. A direct phaser shot can be worse than a fourth degree burn, causing deep and sustaining damage to muscle and tissues. Bucky took his to the chest, just above his heart, which not only increases the likelihood that he’s been critically injured, but makes it even more likely that the coolant will do nothing at all. He’s sweating from the pain, grinding his teeth and hissing, and, absently, nearly breaking Steve’s hand without realizing he’s holding it.

“Did they get away?” Steve asks through gritted teeth of his own. Bucky’s grip on his hand is so strong he’s starting to lose feeling in his fingers.

“I do not know, Captain,” Thor says, apologetically. “I did not have the chance to look.”

“We left the other pod behind, Steve,” Sam says from the pilot’s seat. He’s scanning the air around them, putting in coordinates, and maneuvering the small aircraft all at once. “They know where they are. They’ll find them.”

Steve feels the worry distantly, a faint stab of anxiety under layers of more pressing concerns.

“Thor,” Steve says and the blond prince looks up from where he’s cleaning his own burn. “Where’s Loki?”

Thor’s movements slow at that, fingers pressing a somewhat clean piece of cloth to the blood trickling down his side. His large frame grows still, his expression carefully blank. It costs him to school himself, that anyone can see.

“I do not know,” Thor says quietly.

Steve pauses, mid-spray, freezes himself.

“He was with you,” he says, uncertainly. “You were both together.”

The entire time they were in the compound, Thor was by Loki’s side. Loki took longer to recover from the crash than the others; had, in fact, sustained the most injuries of them all. Thor rarely left him for longer than an hour and even then, only when Loki snapped at him to leave him alone.

“We were together,” Thor says. The expression in his eyes is shuttered, on purpose, as though only by holding everything at bay can he proceed to function. “Then we were not. I tore through the entire compound. He was not anywhere.”

“Did they take him?” Steve asks and starts to feel nauseous. Loki in anyone’s hands is a dangerous tool. Loki in the wrong hands is nothing short of a catastrophe. “Was it HYDRA--”

“No,” Thor says. He looks down at his wounds, unseeingly, frowning. “This was no one’s doing but his own.”

Steve doesn’t know what to say.

“When Loki wants to be where he is, he will be there,” Thor says softly, sadly. “When he wishes to disappear, he will do so. What the rest of us wish, what we can bring to him--in the end, it matters very little.”

“But he’s safe,” Steve says. “Wherever he is, he’s not hurt.”

“I could not say,” Thor says. He looks away, looks out the window as they skim above the Alfheimian treeline. “I hope so.”

“I’m sorry,” Steve says and he means it. He doesn’t understand his friend and Loki and he doubts he ever will; he doubts any of them are really meant to. But for all of Loki’s dangers, all of his flaws and talent at being just a remarkable pain-in-the-ass, Steve has never doubted that he loves Thor, with all of his heart, as much as he can. And Thor’s love for his stepbrother--well that anyone can see, and often has.

“I am as well,” Thor says, simply. “If he wishes to return to me, he will. Until then, we must follow what remains of the plan, Captain.”

Steve watches Thor carefully, with eyes of a Captain and friend. Thor has always been the best of them, the most loyal and hardworking, the most optimistic and kind-hearted. He has a temper and poor impulse control, but that only serves to balance him out, to make him part of the strange, disjointed whole they’ve all created together. Steve has a moment, half a second, to wonder whether this doesn’t have to do with Yggdrasil, with the deal he made with Loki. But then, he reasons to himself guiltily as Bucky finally starts breathing easier under his hands, he doesn’t know that Loki has disappeared for that reason, so he says nothing at all.  
  
  
The little airpod makes it across Alfheim and through the backdoor traffic tunnel back into space, just the way Rhodey had told them it would. It’s not the easiest ride or the most comfortable and at least half a dozen times, Steve is certain that it’s going to fall apart entirely, but it holds remarkably well and by the time they leave Alfheimian space and hurtle toward Svartalfheim, Bucky has stopped looking as though he’s about to die. Even Thor’s wounds are healing. They’re unable to make contact with Natasha or Clint and even if they could, they wouldn’t risk it. HYDRA ships are everywhere across Alfheim’s atmosphere and roving about in the space between the planets besides. They’re lucky that the pod is so little, so undetectable, that they’re able to follow the streams of commercial ships going from planet to planet during their daily runs of imports and exports. Never has Steve been so grateful for capitalism.  
  
They dock on Svartalfheim, in Harudheen, with surprisingly little incident -- if officially becoming international fugitives on every wave, frequency, and channel counts as little incident. The first time the alert goes out, even Sam pales.

“There’s no hiding from this,” he mutters at the controls. Bucky’s sleeping by now, so Steve leaves him and joins Sam in the co-pilot’s seat. They’re both exhausted, bone-tired, but also wired.

“I can’t believe they had all of those clips of us,” Steve says. “We look like assholes.”

“We are assholes,” Sam says. “But not because of those incidents.”

“Whoever’s leading them, it runs deep,” Steve says. He rubs a hand over his face, exhales wearily. “HYDRA’s infiltrated everything. I don’t know who to trust anymore.”

“If they run everything now, it can’t have started recently, Steve,” Sam says, sympathetically. “This group, whatever their aim is, it started a long time ago and you were a part of it, whether you knew it or not.”

Sam can’t possibly hear or feel the drop in Steve’s stomach, the overwhelming feeling of nausea his words inspire. Steve feels sick with it, the knowledge that Sam is right -- this was him too, this was what he was doing and pretending to be a hero, until he realized he wasn’t.

“I don’t know where S.H.I.E.L.D. ends and the governing system starts,” Steve says, staring off into the dark of space. “They’re intertwined. If one is corrupt, the other is too. So what’s the solution? Does it all go?”

“I don’t know,” Sam admits. “I don’t think humans were meant to exist in a vacuum.”

“They weren’t meant to exist in--whatever the fuck this is either.”

“Do you think it was Fury?” Sam asks and Steve’s stomach drops again.

He lets out a heavy, heavy sigh and leans his head back against the headrest, closing his eyes.

“I don’t know,” Steve says. “It could be him. It could be anybody. At this point, it could be me for all I know.”

Sam snorts at that.

“If you were running a shadowy group bent on chaos or a new hegemonic order, I think we’d know.”

Steve opens one eye.

“You don’t know,” he says. “You don’t know my life.”

Sam rolls his eyes.

“Of course I know your life,” he says. “We all know your life. You, my friend, are about as subtle as an Asgardian at an ale festival.”

“Hey!” Thor protests weakly from the back seat. Then he reconsiders. “He may be right, Captain. We Asgardians are not subtle at all and neither, I am afraid, are you.”

*

Steve and Bucky manage to make it down the narrow street without further incident and skirt around three towering buildings before they reach the building they’re looking for. Building isn’t really the correct word for it. It’s a round structure, a cube with a sweeping, mauve dome on top. There are pillars along each side of the cube and a garden decorating the front. The street in front turns to red and purple tiles. Everything is edged in rose-gold.

“This is where they worship?” Steve asks, questioningly. He doesn’t know why Bucky would know, except that Bucky seems to know an exceptional amount about everything these days.

“Yeah,” Bucky grunts. “Some universalist religion. Inside seems--” He pauses, struggling to find the words. “--the religion. Old Christianity. With the ceremonies.”

“Catholic,” Steve says.

“That,” Bucky nods.

Steve remembers his mother teaching him about religion when he was younger. She had never been a big practicer herself, but she had believed in exposing Steve to all of the religions--new and old. There were still strains of the old ones--Protestantism, Catholicism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism--in pockets around the Nine Galaxies and, in some cases, even strong, vibrant communities, but mostly the people of the Nine Galaxies were somewhere between alien worshippers and agnostics. Centuries of war, alien invasions, and interplanetary battles will do that to a species.

“She’ll be here,” Steve says, his eyes sweeping up and down the structure.

“You’re sure,” Bucky asks, although there’s no inflection of a question there.

“I trust her,” Steve exhales.

Bucky looks at him, questioningly.

“She’s--” Steve wasn’t sure how to explain her. “You’ll understand when you meet her. She’s not a person who lies.”

“You aren’t either,” Bucky says, after a moment.

“No,” Steve says. “I lie. I’m just not very good at it.”

Bucky snorts.

“Come on,” Steve says. “If we’re late, I’ll never hear the end of it.”  
  
  
Inside the Temple, the smooth, tile floors are lit in bright colors of light, streaming in from the mosaics lining the top of the dome. Steve couldn’t see it from the outside, but it seems the top of the dome is almost entirely mosaics, which gives the interior a glowing quality that, he supposes, could inspire spirituality. The air smells faintly of incense, or maybe late-summer jasmine, and it’s quiet but for their careful footsteps. He feels almost sacrilegious, entering this space meant for worship for less than holy reasons.

He sees her near the front, sitting primly in a pew to the left of the altar. Steve and Bucky cautiously approach, but before they’re halfway up the row, she stands up. She carefully dusts off her skirt and makes her way into one of the confessionals. Her heels clack resoundingly in the silence, a--rat-a-tat-tat-rat-a-tat-tat-tat.

She makes him dizzy and he hasn’t even reached her yet. Bucky gives him a long and searching look, before pushing on Steve’s lower back. Steve moves forward and Bucky follows close behind.

“I’ll wait outside,” Bucky says. “Tell her I have guns. If she decides to betray you.”

Steve shakes his head, but mutters a thanks before slipping into the confessional next to her.  
  
  
He barely sits down when the wooden panel between them slides open. There’s a screen blocking her from view, but he can see the outlines of her perfect curls, the color of red on her lips as she smiles.

“Steven,” she says in that warm, familiar, accented voice.

“Peggy,” Steve exhales. He smiles. “Pegs. I’ve missed you.”

“You could have written,” Peggy says. “Or called. Or done a number of things before you got yourself declared an international fugitive.”

Peggy sounds stern, almost as though she’s reprimanding him, but he can see the outline of a smile that belies the tone.

“Would you believe that you get terrible reception when you’re on the run?” Steve offers.

Peggy laughs quietly. God, he’s missed that laugh. He had gone to three different planets to follow that laugh.

“Ever the clever answer,” Peggy says. “Never the common sense. What have you done?”

“It’s a long story, Pegs,” Steve says. He feels it on his shoulder, the weight of everything that’s happened and everything that’s to come. “How are you doing?”

“Things are interesting in the office these days,” Peggy says, carefully. “There seem to be...shifts in leadership.”

Steve stiffens.

“Shifts in leadership?”

Peggy simply hums in answer, noncommittally.

“Is Fury--”

“The President is quite well,” Peggy interrupts. There’s a warning in her tone. “It is never so overt. The shifts are occurring around him.”

Steve swallows. They’re in a house of worship, which should be one of the safest places on the planet, but even here there’s no guarantee. They could be perfectly safe, or they could be telling S.H.I.E.L.D. and HYDRA everything that they need to know.

“I need to know,” Steve says, quietly, almost silently. “Can I trust him?”

Peggy doesn’t answer immediately. She seems to be studying him, seems to be picking her words carefully.

“He is the same man he has ever been,” she says finally. “He is the same man who picked you from the streets and treated you with kindness.”

“Kindness is...a word you could use,” Steve almost snorts. He thinks back to all of the times Fury had yelled at him or glared at him menacingly with his single eye.

“Kindness manifests in different ways,” Peggy says.

“What does he think?” Steve asks. “What does he know?”

Again, Peggy takes a minute.

“As much as you do,” she says. Then suddenly, “Do you remember, Steve, when we lived together?”

Steve frowns.

“Yeah?”

“Remember, what was it? Three months into our time together--you had an awful virus. You had thought you weren’t capable of it anymore, not since the treatments.”

Steve remembers. He had caught some sort of infection that had started in his lungs and had, within a week, spread throughout his entire body. It had been like being young and sick again, helpless, unable to fight against an overwhelming force of ill.

“It started slow,” Peggy says. “Your lungs at first, then your sides. I remember that first night, don’t you? You were only coughing. Then you could not move your arms. It took some time, but the infection spread to your entire body.”

Steve knows what she’s trying to say.

“I didn’t realize it was that bad until I almost died.”

“Yes,” Peggy says, softly. “And you would have, had you tried to fight the infection by yourself. But you trusted your doctor. He had been your doctor for a while, had helped you through many ailments before. He did not let you down this time either. He had exactly the right cure for your illness.”

Steve lets out a sigh of relief. He can trust Fury. He hadn’t realized it was weighing him down, but now his limbs feel lighter, almost loose.

“I owe that doctor a lot,” Steve says.

“Yes,” Peggy says. “He is working on understanding a new...strain of cold. He may not know where exactly it originated or how to treat it, but he is working with other medical professionals he trusts. He needs you to trust him as you once did.”

“I trust him,” Steve says. And then, quietly, “If you see him, will you tell him I’m...trying to fight it? I seem to have caught that cold, but I’m trying to fight it off. If he has any medication for me, I could really use the help.”

“Yes, of course,” Peggy agrees.

“And his nurse too,” Steve says.

That makes Peggy laugh.

“His nurse will be very happy that you remembered how integral she is to his...medical operations.”

“Do they know anything about the new virus yet?”

“Some,” Peggy says. “They’re doing their research. Until then, he advises you to take precautions and not aggravate it any further.”

There’s a noise outside of the confessionals and Steve remembers Bucky’s there.

“Is that him?” Peggy asks after a moment, quietly.

“That’s him,” Steve says.

“He’s different than how I remember him,” Peggy says. “I only saw him a few times, when you were all training.”

“He’s different,” Steve confirms. Then he revises, “But also the same. We’re figuring it out, together.”

“I hope you do,” Peggy says. He can hear the smile in her voice, the warmth and fondness. “I hope you’re happy, Steve. I hope if you’re not, that you find some soon.”

Steve says nothing for a moment, although he has a brief memory, lips pressed against his own, a hand in his hair, a metal hand on his ass.

“I’m trying,” he says. “Maybe after I get rid of this cold.”

Peggy hums.

“And you, Pegs?” _I’m sorry_ , he wants to say, although he doesn’t. _I’m sorry for letting the distance grow, after everything that happened._

“I’m happy, Steve,” she says. “Don’t you worry about me.”

He can’t see her properly through that screen, can’t reach out and touch her. Can’t let her know that if it hadn’t happened, if all of it hadn’t happened the way that it had, maybe it could have worked, the two of them, the three of them, their little family that was taken from them before it had even started. But maybe it had all worked out for the best, in some extremely fucked up way. Peggy was where she was, doing what she was supposed to be doing. And Steve--well, he was floating somewhere in space, but it wasn’t all bad. Even a fugitive, even on the run, he had back what he never had dreamed he could have, and that was just enough for him.

“Take care of yourself, Steve,” Peggy says. “Be safe. The nurse will be in touch.”

“Be safe, Peggy,” Steve says. “Please. Be safe.”

Peggy slides the door open to the confessional booth and slips out. Shoved just under the screen separating the two booths is a slip of white paper. He takes it, reads it, and pockets it. Steve gives her a minute before he slides out of his booth too.

When he does, Peggy’s gone and Bucky is staring at a side door leading out of the Temple.

“Who was she?” Bucky asks.

“Someone I used to--” Steve starts and stops. “Someone I care about.”

Bucky turns to him.

“Do you love her?”

“Yes,” Steve says. “In a way.”

“Romantically.”

“I did, once,” Steve says, softly.

“What happened?” Bucky asks, curiously.

Steve thinks back and it’s a blur now, the shouting and the crying, the unexpected pregnancy, the miscarriage, and all of the heartache that came in between. There had been plenty of love too, even some happiness, but what he remembers now, acutely, is the heartache.

“Life,” Steve says.

Bucky studies him for a minute longer before nodding.

“Okay.”

“Let’s go,” Steve says. He feels--he’s not sure. A little melancholic, a little dazed. It’s never easy, when he sees Peggy. She brings a lot of What Ifs with her, a lot of unresolved feelings and guilt.

Maybe he looks worse than he feels, because suddenly he feels a light, reassuring pressure on his elbow.

He looks at Bucky and Bucky looks at him with--it’s not feeling, but it's something. Empathy, maybe.

“Life,” Bucky says, “is a bitch.”

He says it's so seriously that it's almost earnest. Steve blinks and then laughs.

“Yeah,” he says. “You're right.”

“I know.” Bucky nods. “Come on, Rogers. Let's get some cold medicine.”  


*

There’s an abandoned speakeasy in the middle of Harudheen’s redlight district; a vestige of an old and rather foolish era where the Svartalfheim Parliament forgot ancient Midgardian history and had tried to ban liquor for a rather abysmal and unsuccessful one hundred year period. As happens with most of these well-intentioned, yet poorly-designed and ill-conceived failed, legislative initiatives, what had ended up happening instead was a proliferation of alcohol, both local and intergalactic, and speakeasies the likes of which had rarely been replicated on any other planet. The Harudheen speakeasies were, in particular, famed for just how secret they were and just how much alcohol was consumed on any given night during the Prohibition Era.

This particular speakeasy, once called _The Casket_ , was one of the first to shutter when Svartalfheim’s police forces targeted the redlight district for encouraging illegality and poor moral choices. Instead of renovating it into another brothel or parlor, however, the redlight district had kept  _The Casket_ as an underground home for misfits, degenerates, and those running from the law. Naturally, Natasha had found it through her spiders.

The plan is to meet Natasha and Clint there--and Tony, Rhodey, and Bruce, if they had managed to escape in time. Sam programs the coordinates into the airpod, taking them through safe routes of the capital city to deposit them within a few miles of the the meeting point. The last few miles they would walk, to be safe. He’s been on autopilot since Alfheim, so Steve touches his shoulder gently, tells him to get some rest. It shouldn’t take too long to get to the redlight district, but it’s long enough for Sam to rest before they have to meet and start making plans anew.

Sam accepts the offer gratefully, curls into the seat next to Thor and immediately falls asleep. Next to him, Thor is resting off his injuries as well. His sleep is fitful and his face drawn. The loss of Loki is pulling him thin, no matter how much he tries to push it to the back of his mind.

Steve settles into the pilot’s seat, quietly watches Harudheen’s buildings and roads pass below without incident, as though everything is normal, as though the galaxies as they know them aren’t in threat at that very moment. He barely notices Bucky slide into the seat next to him until the seatbelt clicks into place.

“Hey,” Steve turns to him with a tired smile.

Bucky doesn’t really acknowledge it. He’s healing well, but his eyes are glassy, almost shell-shocked. It takes a few moments for Steve to understand why. He swallows when he does, feeling terrible, off-center and unbalanced.

“Where was it?” he asks, after a minute. “Do you remember?”

Bucky grunts at first in response. Maybe he doesn’t remember, or maybe he doesn’t want to--he’s earned a little selective memory loss, all things considered. But then he lets out a low, slow exhale.

“It was winter,” he says. “We landed on a base. It was...somewhere north. Of the city.”

He speaks slowly, uncertainly. Steve doesn’t know if Bucky is remembering as they go or if he’s pulling shards out of his broken memory. Either way, it’s costing him something at the same time it’s giving him something. He supposes this is the way these things go.

“There was something...a riot. An uprising,” Bucky scrunches his entire face as he talks, as though it will help him make sense of his memories. “Elves. We had instructions. We took a train to the...countryside.”

“What happened?” Steve asks, softly.

“Don’t know,” Bucky says, automatically, then stops himself. “No. Something. And ambush, maybe. I remember...being on the train.”

“Inside?”

“On the train,” Bucky shakes his head. “On top. Then, an explosion. I fell. I don’t know what happened to the others.”

Steve exhales, as though he’s inhaled this memory from Bucky, as though he’s taken the story into himself and now needs some sort of release. It takes him a moment to realize that he’s covered Bucky’s metal hand on the armrest. He’s squeezing it so hard that he might have broken the bones on a flesh hand. Bucky looks down at them, bemused.

“They took you after,” Steve says. He releases Bucky’s hand, but doesn’t move his away.

“Yeah,” Bucky says. “I remember waking up. It was cold. My arm hurt a lot. Everything hurt a lot.”

“Do you remember what they looked like?” Steve asks.

“No,” Bucky says. There’s a look on his face, suddenly, like he’s overcome with nausea. He takes his flesh hand and rubs it across. He leaves his metal hand where it is, under Steve’s. “There was a man in glasses. Everything else is...hazy.”

Steve can’t imagine and he doesn’t want to try to. It’s difficult enough to imagine Bucky waking up taken, lost, alone, and in pain. Then his mind helpfully supplies what he knows now--that it was only the beginning, that Bucky couldn’t have known then, when he had woken up on the cold, hard ground in Harudheen, that what he had to look forward to was ten more years of brainwashing and torture.

“Steve,” Bucky says, quietly and he’s looking down again.

Steve follows his gaze, where he’s holding onto Bucky’s hand, perhaps tighter than before.

“Bucky--” Steve starts, but stops when Bucky slowly pulls his hand away. It’s hesitant at first, a quiet offering when he flips the metal hand over, palm up. Bucky doesn’t look back up, but Steve can almost feel it, the terse anxiety rolling off him. Steve takes a breath, and puts his palm on top. He lets Bucky test it, the feeling of flesh against it, if he can feel it at all. It takes a minute before Bucky moves, before he curls his fingers up, interlaces their fingers together.

It’s another minute before he can look back up at Steve, expression drawn somewhere between blank and in wonder.

“Buck,” Steve says softly. “I’m so sorry.”

“For what.” Bucky’s expression shutters.

“For what happened to you. For what they did.” Steve swallows. He can feel it rising up around his shoulders, the guilt he carries with him, everywhere, like a weight he can’t take off. “For letting you go. For not coming with you.”

Bucky laughs at that, low and mirthless.

“So you could have died?” he says. “So they could have taken you too?”

“You didn’t deserve it,” Steve whispers. “What they did to you.”

Bucky looks away, but he doesn’t move his hand.

“No one does.”

And how can Steve explain that yes, no one deserved what Bucky had been through--the unimaginable amounts of horror, pain, and torture, so brutally and acutely inflicted that somehow, his only respite had been to voluntarily forget it was happening again and again--but that Bucky deserved it least of all. He thinks he can imagine what Bucky had to decide, in a twisted kind of way--to hold onto the person he had been and continue to do the things he was doing, with full guilt and some culpability, or to let go of everything entirely, to become a machine and a vessel, still doing terrible things, but with no free will or conscience to break him down. It was selfish, maybe, or a survival mechanism. Either way, Bucky Barnes had traded himself, his memories and his sanity, for the only measure of peace he could have had and Steve can’t find it in his heart to begin to judge him for it. It was a sacrifice no one should have to make, but that it was Bucky, _his_ stupid, big-hearted, kind, sweet Bucky, who had to make it, is what makes it unbearable.

“I’m never going to let them take you again,” Steve says. “I’d die before I let them have you.”

Bucky turns back to him.

“You mean--” Steve starts and stops, his throat thick with feeling. “When I started at S.H.I.E.L.D., I had no one. Ma gone, no other family or friends. I had been without someone for so long, I started thinking that was normal. I thought, maybe it was okay. Maybe not everyone is meant to have someone. I hated you. Do you remember that?”

Steve’s rambling now, he can feel it, but he looks up at Bucky anyway, expectantly. Bucky’s just watching him carefully and carefully expressionless.

“I made snap judgments and I hated you. I thought here’s a person who’s the opposite of me in every way. Rich, handsome, charismatic. Everyone loved you Buck. You lit up the entire goddamned room. People couldn’t help but fall over themselves to be friends with you. And you were good at _everything_. God, it was infuriating. So I told myself you were a stereotype and of course you weren’t.” Jesus, Steve had to stop talking, but he couldn’t. They’re on the run, being hunted, and they’re here, they’re where he lost Bucky once and for all, and he can’t stop talking.

“You were nothing like that, what I made you out to be in my head. You were the best guy I ever met,” Steve says. He’s nearly shaking. “You meant everything to me. My best friend. You stayed with me every time I was sick and you never made me feel small. Do you get that? _Everyone_ made me feel small, even when they didn’t mean to. But you never did. You deserve everything I can give you. If I can give you my life, I will.”

Bucky moves at that, a sudden, almost violent movement, his fingers on Steve’s face, forcing him to look at him.

“Stop,” he says. “Stop giving your life for others.”

Steve looks into those cool blue eyes, searches for a person he lost so long ago, a person he’s desperate to find.

“Do you remember me?” he asks.

“No,” Bucky says. Then he closes his eyes, swallowing. “Yes. Sometimes. Enough times. You little fucking punk.”

“I missed you,” Steve says. “I missed you every fucking day.”

“You’re always giving your life,” Bucky says. His voice is low, controlled, absolutely furious now. “Do you value it so little?”

“I’ve never forgiven myself,” Steve says. “For letting you go that day.”

“You’ve never valued it,” Bucky says and he’s getting angrier, somehow. Still, his fingers don’t tighten on Steve’s jaw. The metal is cool against his skin, the touch almost gentle. “You’ve never seen yourself--the way everyone else has.”

“I relived that moment every day for ten years. How stupid I was. I’m not letting you go again,” Steve says at the same time Bucky says “I won’t let you.”

They’re not talking about the same thing at all, but it fits. The air between them is tense, charged, almost electric, and they’re not talking about the same thing at all, but it fits.

Bucky’s fingers on Steve’s jaw, Steve’s hand, clutching Bucky’s side, unbidden, unconsciously. They stare at each other for a beat, then two, unwilling to let go, breathing the same piece of air between them, thick and charged.

“Peggy,” Bucky finally says, murmurs. He looks down at Steve’s lips.

“I loved her,” Steve says.

“Okay,” Bucky says.

“I don’t love her anymore,” Steve says.

“Okay,” Bucky says again.

He looks down at Steve’s lips again and Steve can feel it on his skin, the ache between the two of them, this draw they’ve never been able to explain. Flour in Steve’s hair and Bucky’s skin on his as they curled together in Steve’s sick bed and a hand on Bucky’s neck before he left, an embrace a beat too long, and a metal hand at Steve’s jaw. For the years and miles between them, there’s also always this, a closeness neither of them can define, with or without memories.

And maybe he would have closed it, the few inches that remain, and maybe he even could have, but then the coordinates beep and the redlight district comes into view.

Behind them, Sam and Thor stir at the sound.

“Are we there?” Thor asks, his voice scratchy, hoarse with disuse.  
  
Steve and Bucky look at one another, study one another, and then slowly, reluctantly, let one another go. The air between them tingles with the unspoken.

“Yeah,” Steve says, his eyes still not straying from Bucky. “We’re close.”

  
They land the airpod in a public pod deck that they pay a few hundred double dollars for, to give them at least a few days. Steve has his hoodie pulled up again, Bucky in clothes they stole the moment they first docked in Svartalfheim, Thor with his hair tied up and sunglasses on, and Sam in a jacket so beat down that the eye almost forcibly passed over it just to avoid processing it altogether.

They cobble together what few things they have and make the careful and wary trek through the outskirts of the redlight district toward the center, where _The Casket_ is abandoned and hidden. It’s subtle, the way the buildings transition from residential and business to the more clandestine and simultaneously ostentatious brothels and parlors of the district. There are workers of every variety here and not just a few walking about publicly, soliciting clients. The high end courtesans don’t have to do the same work the lower end sex workers do, of course, but they end up slinking into hotels and parlors with hooded eyes over shoulders all the same.

Bucky stays close to Steve as they surreptitiously make their way through the streets and if Sam and Thor notice that it’s out of the ordinary, they don’t comment on it. As it is, there’s little to no time to do anything but move through the streets anyway.

They make it to _The Casket_ in one piece and, as planned, split up into two groups to wait out the hour. Steve and Bucky will go in first and Sam and Thor will follow a half an hour after. If any of them have tails following, they at least won’t all get caught at once or expose _The Casket_ for what it is.

Steve and Bucky find a cafe to wait at and Steve orders them both two black coffees and two pastries to wait. It isn’t until he’s inhaled the entirety of his croissant that he realizes just how hungry he was. Bucky shoves his own into Steve’s hand as well.

“Sustenance unnecessary,” is all Bucky says and before Steve can protest, he’s disappeared into the bathroom to check out the window for tails.

Steve makes a mental note to yell at him later about the proper definition of necessary because he knows for a fact that Bucky’s gone just as long as Steve without eating--possibly longer. He finishes the second pastry and a second cup of coffee by the time Bucky reappears.

“No tail,” Bucky says and takes his own, now lukewarm coffee from Steve’s table. He chugs it without expression, although Steve internally winces. “Come on.”

They cross the street to a building with boarded up windows. There’s a bright purple sign with a slash through it--Steve thinks he remembers this sign from his S.H.I.E.L.D. Intelligence training. It’s a sign the Outer Planets use to show death, or illness, or toxic danger. It suits the purposes of _The Casket_ by keeping away prying eyes. They approach the door and stand off to the side. Steve knocks three times rapidly and follows it by two slow knocks, as instructed.

After a moment, a glass piece slides to the right and he peers into dark eyes.

“A riddle, please,” Steve asks, as instructed.

“What have I got in my pocket?” the voice asks in a slight accent.

“A ring,” Steve says.

The eyes continue to peer at him.

“A ring of power,” Steve amends.

There’s still no movement. The voice says nothing more, offers nothing else. Steve is unnerved and there’s movement inside that indicates the person is going to shut the glass piece again, when, suddenly, Bucky chuckles.

“The One Ring of Power,” he says.

The eyes blink at them curiously, an eyebrow quirking up, and the glass piece clicks shut. Then, however, Steve hears the rattle behind the door and a chain is removed. The door opens to let them in.

“You always made fun of me,” Bucky says, almost with a snicker. “For reading science fiction. And fantasy.”

Steve almost sighs, nearly rolls his eyes.

“Do you know how long ago you made me read Tolkien?”

“I read it to you,” Bucky says, unimpressed, honestly, almost fiercely. “Multiple times.”

“Fantasy books make no sense,” Steve says.

“You,” Bucky says, glaring at him, “make no sense.”

Steve blinks at him, just _blinks_ at him, and nearly laughs out loud.

“Are you going to come in?” the same voice says, impatiently, and a young man appears behind the door. He has olive coloring and dark roots under a shock of white hair. “Or would you like to stand there and flirt while the police find us?”  
  
  
The boy’s name is Pietro Maximoff and he and his twin sister, Wanda, are the caretakers of the safehouse, as it turns out.

“Aren’t you a little young to be running a safehouse?” Steve asks as Pietro leads them through dark, ramshackle hallways, down stairs, and through a chained door to the main area.

“There is no young in the redlight district,” Pietro says. “On any planet, in any part of the galaxies.”

Steve supposes that’s more or less right, although the implications are sad and far-reaching in a way he doesn’t have time to examine right now.

“Our friends will be coming soon,” Steve says instead. “Half an hour.”

“And if they answer the question right, Wanda will let them in,” Pietro says. “If they do not, she may shoot them. It depends on her mood.”

Steve frowns at that, but figures Pietro is most likely kidding. If not, he hopes Sam remembers his Tolkien or, at a minimum, that Wanda doesn’t shoot Thor. The Asgardian prince has had a rough couple of days already.

Pietro leads them through the safehouse, which turns out to be even larger than it looks from the outside. It’s a transitional space, where those who know the code can seek refuge for a few hours or a few days. The only way it keeps safe is by not allowing anyone to stay for too long. There are more people who know about the safehouse that way, but the incentive for anyone to rat it out is less if no one knows who’s in it at any given time and if, at any given time, there’s no one in it for very long.

They’re to the end of a long stretch of hallway when a doorway opens to their right. A familiar face appears.

“Cap,” Clint says. “In here.”

He doesn’t say Bucky’s name, just eyes him warily, but he holds the door open wide enough that Bucky knows he’s being allowed inside as well.

“If you need anything, feel free to not ask,” Pietro says, with a wink.

“Go fuck yourself,” Clint smiles at him cheerily and flips Pietro off, which just makes the younger man cackle.

Steve raises an eyebrow as he and Bucky shuffle in.

“Don’t ask,” another familiar voice comes from inside the room. “I think they’re having a weird bromance.”

“Nat,” Steve says in relief. He’s over to her within seconds, wrapping her up in his arms, pulling her tiny body up into him.

“God, let me down,” Natasha says, her voice muffled into his chest. “You’re going to rip open my wounds.  
  
“Shit!” Steve panics and lets her down quickly and Clint chuckles from the corner.

“She doesn’t care about her wounds,” he says. He’s crossed his arms and is leaning against the door. “It’s her reputation. She’s afraid you’ll figure out that she has feelings.”

“Why would you say something so terrible?” Natasha asks, straightening her clothes from Steve’s all-encompassing hug.

“Love means calling people out on their bullshit,” Clint says with a smile.

“I think love means keeping your mouth shut if you don’t want to sleep on the couch,” Natasha says.

“Don’t have a couch,” Clint replies, serenely.

“The floor exists,” Natasha replies, sweetly.

Steve has never in his life been so grateful to see two people before.

“Nat, please sit,” Steve says. “We have a lot to catch you up on and you’re still recovering.”

“Don’t tell me what to do,” Natasha says, in typical Natasha fashion. But she does sit back down on the bed. Not before she sees Bucky, though, and her eyes narrow, just a little. “Barnes.”

“Romanoff,” is all Bucky says.

“Save your weird Russian hostilities for later,” Clint says. He nods back at Steve. “Cap, fill us in.”

  
Sam and Thor manage to show up nearly an hour later and when Steve looks at the doorway questioningly, it’s clear that it’s because Sam has somehow, in the course of thirty minutes, managed to make Pietro Maximoff his best friend.

“If you had brought this guy along first, I would not have given you such difficult time,” Pietro says and he’s about one grin away from slinging his arm around Sam’s shoulder.

“No more bromances,” Natasha almost groans and pushes herself up from the bed gracefully. If she’s still hurting from her burns, she doesn’t show it. “I’m going to find Wanda. I need a break from this testosterone.”

Natasha disappears through the door and Sam, Pietro, and Clint follow not too far behind her. They don’t have much time here, just a few days at most before they have to split into their assignments. The worry settles evenly at the bottom of Steve’s stomach, anxiety prickling across his skin.

“Gonna get air,” Bucky mutters. He’s been standing in the corner of the room this entire time, his arms drawn across his chest, his eyes flickering between each of them, studying them closely, without expression.

“Buck?” Steve questions and Bucky just rolls his eyes.

“Stop being paranoid,” he says. “I’m going to scan for tails.”

Steve reaches out to him before he passes, his hand at Bucky’s flesh elbow. Bucky pauses, body tensing.

“Don’t leave,” he says. “Again.”

“Just going to the roof,” Bucky mutters.

“Promise me,” Steve says.

They look at one another for a moment. The air still feels heavy between them.

“Okay.”

Steve lets him go and Bucky seems to exhale with his entire body, a little shudder running through him that only Steve notices because only Steve is playing close enough attention. When he finally leaves the room, Steve feels the air go out with him.

He exhales himself, a little shakily, scrubs his palms over his face.  
  
“Is that what you two were doing in the front?” Thor asks, mildly.

Steve nearly jumps--he had forgotten the Asgardian prince was there with him.

“Doing what?” he says, somewhat guiltily.

Thor raises a perfect blond eyebrow.

“Whatever that was,” he says.

“We were catching up,” Steve mutters.

“Poorly,” Thor replies and he’s almost amused.

“Yeah, well,” Steve says, noncomittally.

Then he takes a moment to look at Thor--really look at him. They’re all a little worse for the wear, it’s true. Barely escaping a bombing and skirting planets as fugitives on the run will do that to a person. But Thor’s weariness is more than that. The Asgardian’s features are drawn, his lips pursed tight, dark circles under his eyes, an exhaustion in his expression that he can’t quite hide, even when he’s attempting for bland. Thor, much like Steve, has never been able to hide his feelings very well.  

Steve crosses over to the bed.

“Can I?”

Thor gestures openly and Steve takes a seat next to him, the bed dipping under his weight. They don’t say anything for a good portion of time, choosing, instead, to exist side-by-side, deep in thought or in avoiding thought, neither could say.

“Do you know where he could have gone?” Steve asks, finally.

Thor lets out a low breath, as though he’s been holding it in. His shoulders are a straight line, tension embedded deep into thick knots of muscle. How long he’s been carrying this weight with him, Steve doesn’t know, but it seems to make him heavy with it, although he’s too stubborn, too proud to allow his shoulders to slump. It’s more visible in the lack of grace he usually carries, an ease born of privilege and a lifetime of being loved.

“Anywhere,” Thor says, finally. “I do not know how he left or when. Or even why. But my brother is--talented. I could not pretend to read his mind, so I will not try.”

“He’ll come back,” Steve offers. “To you. He loves you.”

“Were that enough,” Thor says. He rubs his hands in his face. “We were always at odds, Loki and I. It took us a long time to realize why. An even longer time to meet somewhere in the middle.”

Steve thinks back to all of the times on _The Avenger_ , when he would catch glimpses of Loki and Thor, often in a corner, often in their own little world. He’s thought, not a few times, how strange the two are, how they make little to no sense in any obvious kind of way. But the few times he allowed himself to watch, he would also admit to himself that he was a little jealous, because even with all of the hurt and history between them, Thor and Loki shared a connection that few seemed to understandable and no one could come between. They gravitated toward one another, existed in each other’s orbits. One was the sun and one was the moon and somewhere, in between, there lay the potential for destruction.

“Has he done this before?” Steve asks.

“Run?” Thor picks at a bandaid that’s begun to peel off his wrist. “Plenty of times. Loki is like--light. He is faster than anyone can process and fleeting. You cannot catch him if he does not wish you to. Before, when he nearly destroyed Asgard. There were years he disappeared. I lost him to his own madness and only found him when he had nearly burnt himself to the ground.”

“Maybe he has a reason this time,” Steve says. He pushes away the uneasiness that he feels. He can see Loki clear in his mind, eyes glowing green, the tree of life illuminated in front of him. He wonders if he’s making the right decision, keeping secret not Loki’s hunger for power, but how far he’s willing to go to taste it. Steve’s loyalty is to Thor, but his promise was made to his brother. He doesn’t know that there’s an easy answer in the middle. Maybe he's just being a coward.

“He always has a reason, undoubtedly,” Thor laughs, lowly. He sighs, picks the bandage off entirely. “It is never easy, losing him. I suppose most times I wait because I know he will return. But now--”

“Why wouldn’t he this time?” Steve asks, gently.

“I do not know,” Thor says and seems to be thinking about something, or remembering. “He knows, about father. About the Odinsleep. I do not know what he will do with the information.”

It depends on what Loki wants more -- the power of the throne he’s always hungered for, or a different power altogether, one that’s more unstable, that’s not promised to him, but that could be. How much risk Loki is willing to take -- that, Steve doesn’t know.

He straightens and Thor pushes his hair back, lifts the gold locks into a bun so that it’s off his neck.

“Should I go back?” Thor asks, staring at a spot against the wall.

“To where?” Steve asks, carefully.

“To Asgard.”

“You’re a fugitive, Thor,” Steve says. “Your pictures are everywhere.”

Thor frowns and turns to Steve.

“That does not matter,” he says. “I am a prince of Asgard. I am to be king. It is a privilege I have and it is a privilege I will exploit. Could I offer the rest of you the same protection--but I am afraid it does not work that way.”

“I know,” Steve sighs. “I know you would if you could. Anyway, it doesn’t matter now. It’s bigger than just a pardon. HYDRA has to go. S.H.I.E.L.D. has to go. It all has to go.”

“And what will rise in its place?” Thor asks, watching him.

“I don’t know,” Steve says. “Something better, hopefully.”

There’s no guarantee and it seems hopelessly naive to take down the entire structure without having something to replace it, but Bucky wasn’t wrong--cut off one head and another grows back. The only way to make sure HYDRA stays gone is to take out the entire serpent altogether.  
  
  
Steve and Thor sit together in silence for a while, Steve musing and Thor taking stock of his injuries. He changes his own bandages and stretches his aching muscles. Eventually, he peels of the dirty shirt he’s been living in for the past few days. Steve watches, with a surreal sort of bemusement, a stretch of muscle on clean, unmarred, golden skin, that should not exist. It should not be possible. And yet here it is, Thor Odinson, the living embodiment of physical perfection. Jesus.

Thor gathers a clean towel and shirt that’s been left on the spare bed. He’s nearly to the door when Steve speaks up again.

“How do you know?” he asks, vaguely.

“Know what?” Thor turns back to Steve questioningly.

“That--he loves you,” Steve swallows. “How do you know Loki returns all the love you’ve given him?”

Thor watches Steve closely, an unreadable expression on his face that then softens, like he’s saying _ah_ to himself. He’s figured out the puzzle that is Steve Rogers, or at least the answer to this one specific question.

“I know because I know him,” Thor says. “He never says it. I do not think he would, even could he say the words. But I can see it in his eyes, feel it in the way he touches me. Like I might disappear if he presses too hard.”

Thor looks thoughtful, soft in a way that’s almost heartbreaking.

“It is in the way he softens when he thinks no one is looking and the way he feels next to me.” Thor looks back at Steve with a smile, small, nostalgic, born of a love that he can’t express, but feels, in a place only one other is allowed to reach. “Loki is all bark, but very little bite. I think, in the end, all he has ever wanted is to be unquestioningly loved. But I have given it to him and he does not often know what to do with it. He--my brother will never be able to say he loves any such thing, but he intentionally and unintentionally shows me in all the ways possible.”

“Is it enough?” Steve asks.

“Oh,” Thor says softly. “I would take any thing he would give me, Captain. I could live on the scraps of Loki, and I have. I know that is not a helpful answer, it may not even be healthy, but--I suppose I am hopeless that way.”

Thor gives him a sad smile before opening the door and leaving for the shower. Steve doesn’t understand it, but he can feel it in his chest, how one person can have so much love to give to another, despite, and perhaps in spite of, never receiving enough or anything at all in return. But then, he supposes, it’s been that way for a long time.

He has been nursing it somewhere deep inside him, that same kind of love, the overwhelming kind, the kind that breaks fault lines into the planet, for one person, a person he had never had the chance to give it to.  
  
He wonders if he’s atrophied with it, this feeling he’s harbored for so long -- like a lead weight in his chest, an anchor tied to his heart that’s kept him at the bottom of the sea when all he had wanted to do was float among the stars.


	12. The Wanted

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have been such a writing rut since July! I had a good 90% of this chapter finished and just couldn't get across the finish line! But with Thor: Ragnarok coming up, I couldn't let this stay unfinished. 
> 
> So for your reading pleasure, a return to Space Gays: The Fic. Including a surprise to get you through these terribly trying times.

They meet in the makeshift common area, which is really just the meeting of four different hallways that Pietro, or his predecessor, had stuck an old, beat-up couch into. Clint sits on the arm of the couch, perched like some kind of bird. Next to him, Natasha sits, alert, leaning forward. His hand rests at the small of her back.

“We can’t go forward together,” Natasha says. Her husky voice soothes Steve’s nerves somehow, something familiar in the face of only the unknown.

Steve leans against the wall across from Natasha and Clint, while Sam leans against the other side of the couch. Pietro and Wanda Maximoff sit on the floor, leaning against one another. Wanda’s paying rapid attention while Pietro plays some kind of game where he’s trying to dart a pen in and out of the spaces between her fingers. He’s quick and doesn’t miss once.

“Who’s gonna want to give us a ship?” Sam asks. His arms are crossed and he’s drumming on one arm with his fingers. “Our faces are plastered across the galaxies. We’re more wanted than the gods themselves.”

At this, a smile turns up at the corners of Pietro’s mouth. His pen lands dead center between Wanda’s left forefinger and middle finger. She seems unconcerned.

“You’re new to this, aren’t you?” Pietro asks with a grin.

“What?” Sam frowns.

“Being a criminal.” Pietro leans back on his hands and looks at the group on the couch. “Sometimes, bird man, the best way to get help from other criminals is to be one yourself. Do you think S.H.I.E.L.D. owns all ships?”

“How are we gonna get out of the Svartalfheim airspace without a regulation aircraft?” Sam points out. “Everything is locked down, thanks to us. Well, thanks to Barnes’s former employers.”

“Hey,” Steve protests and this time Pietro looks over at Natasha with his grin.

“Your friends really do not trust you, do they?”

“What the lesser Maximoff means to say,” Natasha says--and Wanda smiles at that--with a roll of her eyes, “is that I’ll take care of it. When bribes don’t work, computers do the rest.”

That sounds risky and stupid to Steve, which undoubtedly means it’s going to work.

 “Okay,” he says and turns to Pietro and Wanda. There’s still something off about the Maximoff twins. Steve’s not sure he trusts them and one look at Natasha indicates she doesn’t either. Still, they have a bridge to burn with S.H.I.E.L.D. and HYDRA _is_ S.H.I.E.L.D. now for all intents and purposes. It’s their anger and vengeance that Steve knows to trust, if not the twins themselves. “Pietro, Wanda, can you secure a craft?”

 “When did I say I could do that?” Pietro asks with a tilt of his head. Sam lets out a noise of frustration and is about to say something, when finally, Wanda moves, a hand on her brother’s shoulder.

 “What Pietro means is that he does not usually do our deals,” she says. Then she flashes a smile at Steve, both sweet and deadly at once. “I do.”

 “And?” Natasha raises an eyebrow, watching the exchange bounce back and forth.

 “I do not wish to hide down here any longer,” Wanda says. She looks at Steve pointedly, discerningly.

 “You...want to join us?” Steve asks slowly.

 “Huh,” is Pietro’s remark. He watches his sister with something like amusement, but also curiosity. Whatever Wanda is thinking, her brother can’t read.

“I am not a rat to be scurrying about the ground,” Wanda says. “Someone else can take care of the runaways. I wish to be free.” A pause and then a flicker toward Pietro, both knowing and maybe a little exasperated. “With my brother.”

“Do we have room for more runaways?” Clint asks. “We’re not a halfway house. Although that could be fun too.”

“We don’t have a ship anymore,” Steve says. “And we may not survive.”

Wanda shrugs, as though this means nothing at all.

“We will take those odds.”

“Okay,” Steve says, but looks up at Natasha. Natasha is watching the proceedings with a calculated eye. When she says nothing, Steve nods. “Okay.”

Wanda looks visibly cheered and she stands abruptly, holding her hand out to her brother.

“Come, Pietro, we must talk to a man about a ship.”

“Is it the man I like or the man I hate?”

“It is never the man you like,” Wanda says. “You do not like anyone.”

“That is not untrue,” Pietro says. On his perch, Clint snickers a little and Pietro winks at him.

“Stop flirting,” Wanda says. “We are late and Mr. Barton is already taken.”

“The good ones always are,” Pietro sighs.

“Captain,” Wanda says, nodding at Steve before pulling Pietro out of the room, “we will have your ship. I wish to see HYDRA burn more than any of you and if speaking to a man my brother hates is the price to pay, then we shall pay it.”

“Speak for yourself,” they can hear Pietro grumble as he follows her, but it’s with all the petulance of Pietro and none of the vehemence of someone who will not follow his sister to the ends of the galaxies.

“Sam and I are going to make contact with Maria,” Steve says. “I have an idea of where she and Nick are. You and Clint take Bucky and the Maximoffs up.”

“Are you sure this is a good idea, Cap?” Clint asks with a frown. “They’ll never believe us if you’re not here.”

“We’re going to catch up as soon as we can,” Steve says. “And in the meantime--”

“I will act as Captain,” a deep voice comes from the corner. Thor emerges from the hallway, eyes red and hair slightly tousled from sleep.

“Thor?” Sam frowns.

“I am a prince of Asgard,” Thor says, nodding at Steve. He and Steve had decided this last minute. It was a plan that made perfect sense. “The commander of HYDRA will listen only to the Captain of _The Avenger_ and Steven is the Captain. But I am a prince where none of you are. If not Steven, it must be me. I will tell them I will give them the Winter Soldier in exchange for safe passage for me.”

“And they’ll listen?” Natasha leans forward in interest.

“I am Asgardian royalty and the next king,” Thor shrugs. “A prince who has been waited upon his entire life. Who has helped his fugitive stepbrother escape from S.H.I.E.L.D. I am what Midgardians call a ‘loose cannon.’ And a spoiled brat.”

“HYDRA will think Thor is desperate,” Steve explains. “A prince not allowed back into Asgard? Someone who has been privileged his entire life, arrogant and spoiled, who’s in way over his head. Obviously, he’s going to want to barter for his own freedom at any cost.”

“You’re willing to do that to your reputation?” Sam asks gently.

“What HYDRA does not understand,” Thor says with a thin smile, “is that Asgardians do not care. And certainly not my father. I am their prince and their future king and I am beloved. I was never in danger, my friends. I am sorry you are.”

Natasha sits back and looks impressed.

“Well,” she says. “I’m impressed.”

“We draw them out and you hack into their mainframe,” Steve says. “We dump all of their intelligence. We broadcast everything. I want every human and alien and being in between to know what they’ve been doing.”

“So you get Fury and we do all the rest?” Natasha asks Steve with a little tilt to her head.

“Yeah,” Steve says. “That a problem?”

“Oh no. We’ll do the rest,” Natasha says, sitting back and looking pleased. “We’re very good at the rest.”

*

Pietro and Wanda Maximoff have more secrets hidden within the confined space of the safehouse than Steve manages to hide aboard the far-spread corners of his spaceship. This makes the Maximoff twins infinitely more interesting to Bucky than he initially gave them credit for. On the surface the twins are a little unnerving, somehow serene and wrapped in barely contained anger at the same time. It is not an unfamiliar combination for Bucky, who has to wipe himself blank to keep from physically destroying his surroundings out of sheer anger every second of every day, but he supposes, objectively, it could be unnerving. They're orphans, Bucky learns while eavesdropping through thin walls and through the sheer luck of, somehow, always being in the right place at the right time. Their parents had been killed when they were younger, during a S.H.I.E.L.D. raid in the old Midgard city of Sokovia. Still, somehow, they're not purely Midgardian. He can feel something strange roll off the girl, whenever she's near, and if he had to put voice to thought, he'd guess that they're at least partially extraterrestrial, although they look completely human.

Sometimes he hears them murmuring together, foreheads close, touching, more often than not, and he has his suspicions, but who is he to judge? He doesn't care one way or another.

Instead, he gathers intelligence efficiently, quietly, and by the time he finds the little latch on the floor of Pietro's room, he's not particularly surprised at the stairs that lead to the weapons cache. Pietro and Wanda have been running this safehouse for years now--it makes sense that they've built up their own stores. It's protection and insurance in a world run by spiders and fugitives tangled in their own dark webs.

He takes the stairs down two at a time and it's only at the bottom that he realizes how low the ceiling is. He nearly hits his head on it. He looks up and registers two things at once: first, that there's a light on and, second, that he's not alone.

He nearly laughs out loud, if he could remember how to do that sort of thing.

"I should have known," he says.

Natasha grunts. She's eyeing a wall lined with knives of varying shapes, sizes, and blades. She leans forward and picks off one made of a material so black that it nearly hurts to look at.

"Everyone has secrets," Natasha says. "Not everyone is entitled to them."

Bucky snorts. He hesitates and then shrugs, moves into the room. It's not very large, but it's big enough that the two aren’t pressed up against one another or anything.   
  
"You don't trust the Maximoff twins?"

The barest hint of a frown flickers across Natasha's otherwise placid feature. Her green eyes study the obsidian place, although her mind is otherwise engaged. Her red hair is pulled back into a half-bun. She's beautiful, unassuming, and completely lethal. She's grown up well, his little bee.

"There's something off about them," she says.

"They're not HYDRA," Bucky says. His eyes go to a wall with different guns. His muscles twitch, his fingers almost itching to hold weaponry. There's a phaser and two blades hidden on his body, but still. Never enough weapons.

"No?"

"I would know if HYDRA was hiding them," Bucky says, simply.

"Pretty high up, were you?" Natasha raises a red eyebrow.

"Something like that."

Bucky picks up a black gun, old-school, with metal bullets and everything. He checks the chamber.

"Nothing quite as destructive as old guns," he murmurs. "Phasers hurt, but guns kill."

"Try not to sound so creepy," Natasha says. She tucks the knife into one of the straps at her thighs and then turns, looking at the same wall of guns. She picks up a phaser. "You think it'll work?"

"The gun?"

"The plan," Natasha says, unimpressed. She swears lightly in Russian and Bucky's lips twitch up. He almost manages a smile. Maybe he is healing.

"Split up, draw HYDRA out, and--what? Corner them?"

"Something like that," Natasha murmurs his words back to him. She's clever, poisonous like a black widow.

"It's stupid," Bucky says. "You should have let me do what I wanted in the first place. On board. Kill the head of the snake."

"Who was stopping you?" Natasha asks, head tilted. "Not me."

Bucky snorts at that.

"Stubborn little punk," he says. He doesn't know why he says it, but the words are familiar in his mouth and they ring true anyway. Maybe in another life.

"If you get yourself killed, he'll be unbearable," Natasha says. She picks up a phaser, checks the safety, and straps it just inside her shirt. "I don't have the patience."

"You're a lot of talk, _pchelka_ ," Bucky says. He watches her carefully. She's graceful and careful, disinterest lining the curves of her body, but she's not unreadable. Not to him. Once you take a person apart, you can always put them back together. "But you are someone else's secret, not mine."

"I'm not hiding anything," she says. She straps a gun to her other side and tugs her shirt down. Then she looks back up at Bucky, eyes flashing. "Steve knows I love him."

She means it, that much is clear. Bucky looks away at that, not from her gaze, but from her words. Suddenly, his mouth is dry.

"Pick some guns," Natasha says. "It's time to go."

Bucky needs a moment more to collect himself and it's to his own strangely good fortune that Natasha doesn't feel the need to linger. She's past him, barely brushing his arm as she moves, and is nearly to the top of the stairs when she stops.

"Why did you come back, Barnes?"

Why did he come back? Bucky's asked himself this same question. It hadn't been his intention. He had wanted to disappear. He had wanted to leave behind the weight of Steve's eyes, the anchor of his own name, Bucky Barnes, a name that had only just come back to try and claim him. But he's not Bucky Barnes anymore, not the same one, so he's left somewhere in the middle, with a metal arm and half an identity. It wasn't because he wanted to be anything more. It was because Steve had needed him to be. And for some reason that had stayed his hand back on the airpod. He had almost lifted off and then the idiot had gone rushing toward a bombed compound and a brief second of internal warring had resulted in something he could barely control, an overwhelming impulse to protect that overrode his clinical hardwiring. He had barely registered it before he was dragging Steve back by the collar. He hadn't realized he was out of the airpod until he was breathing in acrid smoke and Steve was struggling against him.

He licks his lips, fingers running over the ridges of the gun he's forgotten he's still palming.

"Don't have anywhere else to go," he says.

Natasha studies him closely, green eyes watching him and maybe finding him wanting or maybe, finding the very answer she's seeking.

"Is that enough for you?"

"Yes," he says, after a moment. And then-- "He is."

He doesn’t know why he says it, much less why he admits it.

Natasha stares at him for a moment longer before turning back up the stairs. Maybe he's projecting, but he thinks he saw something there that he hasn't seen in a long time--approval.

"Find a good one," her voice floats down to him as she leaves. "We have to shoot a lot of space Nazis."

 *

They're supposed to meet in the common area in two hours before splitting off into two different groups. Thor emerges from the shower when he sees something shimmer down the hallway. He freezes and drops his towel. He follows the trail of familiar green, a light phosphorescence that he can't see so much as feel. The familiarity of it makes his breath come up short.

He rounds the corner and follows it into a room. The door closes behind him quietly.

Within seconds he has his fingers closing around the man’s throat. He uses his immense strength to lift him up, slams him into the door.  

Loki winces, his head thudding against the door. A sly grin spreads across his face.

"Why, brother. I missed you too."

"Where have you been?" Thor growls. Loki is so goddamned selfish and infuriating, Thor never knows which emotion is going to win out--will it be anger, frustration, relief, or something else? At the moment, it seems to be anger. One day he will have torn his brother apart before he can process a second breath. 

"Here and there," Loki says, cheerfully.

"How did you find us?" Thor leans forward, angrily applies a little more pressure.

"I have my ways," Loki says and then he's truly wincing. "Would you mind--a little difficult to breathe here."

"It is no more than you deserve," Thor growls again, but then he releases his grip slightly, ignoring the accompanying pang of guilt.

"I thought you would have been happy to see me alive," Loki mutters. He takes Thor's slackening and pushes his hand off. Thor relents with a grunt and Loki rubs his own hands across his sore throat.

"I have not decided yet," Thor says, eyeing him.

"I did not stay gone too long this time," Loki says. “You are so very inconsistent in what you want from me.”

He moves forward and Thor can sense the danger. When Loki wants something, when he's feeling some kind of way, a touch is all it takes. He's awful close and Thor is trying to hold onto his sense of anger for as long as possible.

"You could have said something," Thor says. "You were injured. Then you disappeared."

"I told you I was fine," Loki says. He inches closer and Thor, despite all instincts of self-preservation, does not move out of his grasp. Loki's long, exquisite fingers curl onto Thor's bare chest. "I told you, did I not? Back on Asgard. You have bound us together, brother. I will always come back to you."

Thor nearly snorts at that.

"That is certainly what one wishes to hear. Not love, but obligation."

"Are they not the same?" Loki tilts his head curiously. Then he shrugs. "No matter. You know you have both. Love, obligation, devotion, obsession. You have it all from me."

"Do I?" Thor looks at him darkly.

"You are so very sensitive," Loki says, which does make Thor snort. Loki is the most emotional, sensitive creature he has ever met. "I love you with every part of me, brother. Shall I burn it into you?"

"You are like a poison," Thor says. Then he sighs, rubs his palms into his eyes. Loki takes the opportunity to maneuver Thor backwards. The back of Thor's knees hit the edge of a bed and Loki eases him down onto it. Then he straddles his lap.

"Don't be like that," Loki says. "I just had to leave for a little bit."

"Are you leaving again?" Thor looks up at him. And this time the anger is gone, as he knew it would be. What's left is--the same thing. Love and longing, sadness he cannot keep inside. All he wishes is to keep his brother, but his brother never wishes to be caught. His riddles keep him a step out of Thor's reach at all times.

"Shh," Loki says, a finger to Thor's lips. "We only have a little while."

Thor's mouth opens in protest, but Loki's tongue slips in and then Thor lets out a soft noise, large hands spread across the small of Loki's back, hauling him closer.

Loki eases him backwards and Thor grasps at the bottom of Loki's tunic, hauls it up and over his head. It gets tossed somewhere, Thor doesn't know or care where. Loki presses hot, greedy, bruising kisses into Thor's lips, bites down at his pulse point and Thor lets out a loud groan. His fingers scrabble at Loki's pants and Loki lifts his hips so that Thor can slide them down and off.

His fingers are pressing into the small dips at Loki's back, his hips rocking up into Loki's before he manages to get a hold of himself, his brain slowly, painfully catching up to the desire pooling in his belly. It's a close call and Loki does his best to keep Thor there at the edge, moving down Thor's body until his mouth is ghosting just above the tent in Thor's thin sleep pants.

"No," Thor gasps out, grasps Loki by the arms and drags him back up. Loki hovers above him, hands to either side of Thor's head. "Answer me. I deserve to know if I should mourn you."

"If I say yes, will you refuse to do so anyway?" Loki asks.

"No more riddles, Loki." Thor looks up at him, brushes long strands of dark hair away from Loki's face, tucks his hair behind his ears. "You are disappearing for what purpose I do not know. Is this goodbye?"

Loki stills at that and he's so close that Thor can feel it, the way his heart beats rapidly in his chest. Thor reaches up, kisses the skin above Loki's heart. There is a goodness in him, even if he does not believe so.

"What I do," Loki says quietly, "I do for you."

"That is not an answer, brother," Thor observes.

"I do not have one to give," Loki says.

That, perhaps, is the truest Loki has ever been--perhaps, the truest Loki can manage. It is not what Thor wants to hear, but he cannot ask for more when what he had wanted was the truth to begin with.

"Stay with us," Thor says. He tries not to plead. "Stay and fight HYDRA. Be good."

"Oh Thor," Loki says and he leans into Thor's touch, Thor's palm cupping his cheek. "I was not made for good."

"You were not made for evil, either," Thor insists.

"No," Loki says. "Perhaps not. Perhaps something in the middle."

He reaches down and when Thor meets his mouth this time, it's slower, with words unspoken between them. Thor opens his mouth and Loki his and they do not move further, they seek only to breathe one another's existence, as though that might be enough. Thor drinks from this kiss, like a man dying of thirst.

When Thor maneuvers Loki onto his back, hovers over him instead, it's with an exaggerated gentleness, a break from their usual. Loki helps Thor out of his clothes and they linger, light touches and even softer breathing.

"I love you," Thor says, into Loki's skin. He doesn't say it often, chooses, usually, to express his feeling by action, something that will not frighten his brother away. But tonight feels different. Tonight, Loki is slipping through his fingers, even as he lets out little gasps under him.

"That is why," Loki breathes out, arching into Thor's touch, familiar and surprised, and Thor thinks this--this is the most beautiful sight he will ever see. "Do you trust me, brother?"

Thor slowly licks a stripe up Loki's chest, lays little bites against his collarbone and throat, and comes back to his mouth.

"I am trying," Thor says, into Loki’s mouth, hovering barely above him. “Do not go.”

“Shh,” Loki says again, the sound a breath on Thor’s lips. He leans up and kisses him.  
  
  
They don't say goodbye, not in so many words, but Thor feels it anyway. When he wakes up the next morning and turns his head, he isn't surprised to find that his brother has gone. That doesn't stop his heart from breaking, all the same.

 *

Steve is packing a few spare things -- some underwear, an extra hoodie, and a pair of sweatpants that he and Sam had picked up that morning when they had gone on a supply run. There’s a phaser on the bedspread, two maps, a pair of sunglasses, and a baseball cap. He and Sam don’t know how long it’s going to take to track Fury or Maria down without communication devices, but they suspect it’s going to be long enough that hiding their identities is going to come increasingly more difficult. A baseball cap might work for another few days or even a week, but then Steve’s going to have to consider alternative measures. Maybe a beard.

He’s trying to envision what he would look like with facial hair when someone throws three knives, two phasers, and an untraceable phaser rifle down on the bed next to him.

“What are you going to do with one?” Bucky grunts. “Shoot a rabbit?”

“I make a mean roast rabbit over a spit. You ever had cooked rabbit?” Steve asks, but gratefully picks up a phaser, checks the safety, and shoves it into the bag next to the underwear.

Bucky snorts.

“Yeah. HYDRA gave me five course meals whenever I asked.”

“It’s pretty good,” Steve says. “Let’s hope it doesn’t turn to that.”

“To what?”

“Shooting rabbits with phasers and cooking them in the forest,” Steve says.

Bucky cocks his head slightly, a curious look on his face. Then, suddenly, he lets out a bark of laughter.

“That was one of the simulations,” he says. “If you were stuck in a forest for two weeks, how would you survive?”

“And you and Dum Dum survived off of rabbits?”

“No,” Bucky scoffs. “He had a...refined palate.”

“Dum Dum Dugan,” Steve says, “Would eat a two day old hot dog off the floor if you let him.”

Bucky doesn’t laugh at that, but his lips do curl up into what could be mistaken for a smile.

“Where’d you get these?” Steve asks.

“The twins,” Bucky says, darkly. “Are hiding something.”

“I think it might be that they have shady contacts and want to destroy S.H.I.E.L.D. and HYDRA,” Steve says. “They’re not hiding it very well.”

“Maybe,” Bucky grunts, crossing his arms.

“You okay with this?” Steve finishes putting the few things on his bed into the bag. He straps one phaser to the holder at his waist, pockets two of the knives, and slides the baseball cap on. He buries the other phaser and the rifle into the bottom of the bag.   
  
“It’s a stupid idea,” Bucky says. “Splitting up. Strategy instead of...killing.”

“I don’t think strategy means there won’t be killing,” Steve says. “Although I’d like to avoid it if I can.”

“You can’t avoid killing. Death is the only certainty.”

“That’s cheerful,” Steve says, lips twitching.

“He won’t let you,” Bucky says, stony.

Steve’s movements slow at that.

“He?”

Bucky’s expression shutters further, his body tensing.

“Who, Buck?” Steve straightens as well. “It’s a man. Leading HYDRA?”

Bucky shakes his head, his eyes taking on a skittish, nervous quality.

“He’s not here with you, Bucky,” Steve says, taking a step closer. Bucky takes a step back, automatically, and Steve stops. “You’re safe.”

“Safety is a myth,” Bucky says. He raises his shirt and Steve sees the same scattering of scars he saw while on Alfheim, along with two phasers, a gun, and a handful of knives strapped to a belt stretching across his middle. “If I was safe, I wouldn’t need these.”

And Steve knows Bucky means for this to be a serious comment and the amount of weapons on his body should be and is concerning--but for a moment, all Steve can see is skin and a stretch of muscle. A hardened, well-defined abdomen and the lines of a sharp v leading down to--Steve swallows as heat pools low in his belly, despite himself.

He looks back up and Bucky is staring at him, halfway between amusement and something dark and intense. He slowly lowers his shirt and Steve feels his throat dry, a flush crawl up his neck. It’s not the proper time to be wondering what his best friend’s skin might taste like on his tongue, but he can’t seem to tear his eyes away from what he’s seen or, what’s just above, a well-curved, thick mouth that Steve has spent the better part of ten years wishing he’d taken the chance to get to know.

“Bucky,” Steve says. His voice comes out low, almost hoarse. The desire would be blatant to hear even if he could stop staring at Bucky’s lips. “I--”

He can’t seem to think of more words.

“Why do I feel this way?” Bucky asks slowly, into the silence. His crossed arms tense further, his fingers digging into arms and sides. “It doesn’t make sense.”

“Why not?” Steve asks, and then, quietly. “How do you feel?”

“I don’t know you,” Bucky says.

“That’s not true. You know me, Buck,” Steve says softly. He takes a step closer and stops. “You’ve known me for so long. No one knows me better.”

“That was another me,” Bucky says. “That person--he’s gone. I just met you.”

“If you really believed that, you would have killed me. You could have killed me,” Steve says. He takes another step and stops. “And you didn’t. Why?”

“I don’t know,” Bucky says.

What few feet there were between them slowly closes as Steve’s feet bring him closer to Bucky, unbidden, thoughtlessly. Bucky doesn’t move away. His entire body is pulled tight, taut, almost trembling with tension. They stand facing one another. Bucky looks up at him.

“You used to be shorter,” Bucky says, remembering in flickers. “You would fit in my arms.”

“I wish I had told you. ,” Steve says, so quietly he can barely hear himself. “I spent so long fighting with you and not even half that time telling you how much you meant to me.”

He moves his hand forward and pauses, half an inch from touching. Bucky looks up at him, somehow blank and intense at the same time, an edge Steve can see and almost feel. Slowly, breath by breath, Bucky turns his face, leans into Steve’s touch.

“I don’t know when I’m him and when I’m the Winter Soldier,” Bucky says. “I don’t know how to be the person in between.”

“We’ll figure it out together,” Steve says. He carefully runs his thumb across Bucky’s jaw. Bucky holds his breath, nearly shudders.

“What if I’m never that person again?” he asks. “What if I’m this forever?”

“I don’t care,” Steve says. “We’re going to end this, then we’re going to spend years catching up on all the years we’ve lost.”

Bucky says nothing to that, just exhales, somewhat shakily. Emotion threatens to crawl up Steve’s throat and he swallows it down, traces his fingers down Bucky’s cheek, touch feather-light. His hand ends up in Bucky’s hair. Bucky, both tense and leaning into Steve’s attention at once, reaches forward, shakily, as though reaching for a raft, a lifesaver, something that will keep him from drowning. His flesh fingers curl into Steve’s shirt.

“How do you feel?” Steve peers down at him, asks him again.

“Like...I can’t breathe,” Bucky barely says. “I can’t function. Around you.”

Steve lifts his other hand to Bucky’s face, brushes another thumb across his jaw, and leans forward, stops just before. Bucky looks up at him, blue against blue.  

“Am I too late?” Steve asks, softly.

“No,” Bucky breathes out, after a beat. “You’re the only piece of my past I have left to hold onto.”

And, hearts hammering between them, he kisses him.   
  
  
They don’t kiss fast and they don’t kiss slow. They kiss like they’re unsure, hesitant at first, cautious and unfamiliar. Then, by accident or chance, Bucky opens his mouth to breathe and Steve’s teeth skim across his lower lips and hunger flares between them, desperate and hard. Bucky’s metal fingers curl into Steve’s shirt and he pulls him close, and then closer, and then he wraps his arms around Steve’s back, sucking bruises onto Steve’s lips. Steve gasps slightly, breaks the kiss to press more kisses to Bucky’s jaw, to his cheek, to the top of his head as Bucky tucks his face into Steve’s shoulder. They breathe in and out together, ragged, heavy, the air between them still thick and charged. Bucky holds onto him as though starved for touch, desperate to hold onto something solid. Steve will remember that, later.

“We have to go,” Steve says eventually, once Bucky’s stopped shaking in his arms. Steve pulls back, looks down at him, kisses him again. The hunger is still there, making both of their eyes glassy with need. Bucky braces his hands onto Steve’s neck, pulls him closer and closer still, until they’re panting into each other’s mouths, although whether it’s from emotion or exertion, they couldn’t say.

“I don’t want to,” Bucky says, kissing him again. “Stop. Make me stop.”

“No. Do you know how long I’ve been waiting for this?” Steve says. He kisses him back, again and again, arms winding around Bucky.

“How long?”

“Too fucking long.” Bucky gets crowded against a wall and Steve leans back in, tries to suck a bruise onto Bucky’s neck. At first that makes Bucky tense, but then he lets out a hiss, a sound between a groan and a sigh of pleasure. He’s almost writing under Steve’s touch. “It used to drive me crazy. When you paid attention to anyone else. When I thought you liked anyone else. I was always so stupidly jealous.”

“I didn’t,” Bucky says automatically and Steve stops his ministrations to pull back and look at him.

“What?”

“I didn’t,” Bucky repeats. He licks his lips, red and swollen from kissing, trying to catch his breath. “I remember--I was crazy about you. From the moment we met.”

“We got into a brawl the moment we met,” Steve says with a wry smile. “We got arrested. Remember?”

“Yeah,” Bucky says and he almost smirks. “I remember. You were a little blond-haired shit, so angry. I remember being mad. Also remember being attracted.”

“Shut up,” Steve laughs, turning pink despite himself.

“Always thought you were beautiful,” Bucky says, almost angrily. “Remember that too.”

“Are you making up memories now?” Steve asks.

“A decade of brainwashing and you’re still an annoying little shit,” Bucky says, unimpressed.

That makes Steve laugh and Jesus--they need to go, but he can’t stop drinking in Bucky’s warmth, can’t stop nipping at his lips and his throat to hear him make those little sighs and noises like moans.

“Can’t keep Fury waiting,” Bucky finally pushes him away, voice a little strangled. “Sorry--meant, the doctor.”

“Holy shit,” Steve swears and pulls back. “ _You’re_ an annoying little shit too.”

“I’m the Winter Soldier,” Bucky says, grinning and baring his teeth.

“What, I’m supposed to be afraid?” Steve raises an eyebrow.

“Yeah,” Bucky says. “Could crush you with my thighs.”

“Wouldn’t hate that--” Steve almost finishes the sentence before Bucky shoves his chest. Steve would be concerned if Bucky’s face hadn’t twisted just so.

“One day at a time, Rogers,” Bucky rasps. “Get to know you first, then your kinks.”

“Okay, okay,” Steve relents, laughing. “Never thought you’d be the one slowing _me_ down.”

“I have memory loss. I’m not stupid,” Bucky says, jabbing a finger into Steve’s chest. “Don’t have to spend any more time with you to know you’re the troublemaker in this relationship.”

Steve laughs again, at that. Norns, he can’t seem to stop laughing. Then, because he can’t help himself, he draws Bucky in for another long, lingering, breathless kiss.

“Jesus, Rogers,” Bucky says. “That escalated.”

“Apparently,” Steve says and presses one last kiss to his mouth, “We were handling everything poorly.”

“I coulda told you that,” Bucky says and finally pulls back, puts enough space between them to actually get them to stop touching each other. It takes a monumental effort. “I saw you and tried to kill you.”

“I put you in a cage.”

“I shot you.”

“I forgot you on the ship.”

“Real match made in heaven,” Bucky snorts. “Fairytale romance.”

“Maybe.” Steve’s expression softens. He smiles, almost happy and shy, despite--everything. “You think you’d want that? After...everything.”

“Want what?”

Steve swallows, a little nervous. He runs a hand through his messed up hair, tries to flatten it. Fails, mostly. This is the absolute wrong time for this, but he has too much serotonin muddying up his usual curmudgeonly clarity.

“A romance...with me. A relationship.”

Bucky runs a thumb over his lower lip. It must still be sensitive, because he makes a pleased kind of face. It makes Steve’s chest flutter in a stupid, overwhelming kinda way. Then he looks serious again, crosses his arms and looks anywhere but at Steve.

“We’re in a fucking war, Rogers. Have to not be dead first.”

“Bucky,” Steve says. “That’s not an answer.”

“I’m the Winter Soldier,” Bucky says, although his assertion fades halfway through the sentence. He looks frustrated suddenly and exhales, scrubs his hands over his face. “Let me...remember how to be human first.”

That’s not the answer Steve wants. He’s wanted this--wanted _them_ for so long, it’s infuriating, almost excruciating for him to not have it immediately, now that he knows it might be possible. He’s never been a very patient sort of guy. But Bucky’s also been through hell and back and a few kisses and pent up sexual frustration won’t change that, not overnight. Maybe it’s not about Steve at all. Maybe Bucky is just so starved for touch and affection that anyone would do--and it just so happens that Steve is the best option, his best friend, someone who’s there and clearly willing. The thought makes Steve’s stomach sink.

“Okay,” he says softly. “You’ve earned that.”

Bucky doesn’t say anything for a moment and then he looks up.

“Thank you. Steve.”

Steve doesn’t know what to say to that. Or, more accurately, there’s almost too much he can say to that. Instead, he swallows and steps back.

“We gotta go,” he says, finally. His limbs feel like they’re buzzing, adrenaline he can’t seem to shake. He’s warm and cold at the same time. He feels like he’s developing a fever, but really it’s just that he wants to touch Bucky again so much it’s nearly driving him out of his skin.

Maybe after this is all over, he thinks. Maybe, once they’ve survived this fight, once they’ve destroyed HYDRA and rescue the galaxy, he and Bucky can start over again. It’s almost too much to hope for, but Steve hasn’t had anything to hope for in a long, long time, so when Bucky gives him a faint smile and steps back into the hallway, Steve follows him without protest.

They’re only a few steps out when Bucky, suddenly, reaches forward, hand gently brushing Steve’s hair, fingers straightening mussed up strands.

“If you’re not careful, everyone will know,” he says.

“What?” Steve tries not to color at the touch.

“That you got yourself kissed by a boy,” Bucky says, giving Steve a rare, crooked, mischievous smile.

Steve can’t seem to keep the stupid grin that follows off his face, not even when Sam, who runs into them a few minutes later, raises an eyebrow and gives him a very knowing look.  
  
  
He’s passed the chained door, one foot on the bottom stair leading to the main floor, when, in the dark next to him, Steve senses, rather than sees him.

“Captain,” Loki says, voice quiet.

Steve knows, then. He knows it before turning. He knows it before he even thinks to ask the Jotun where he came from or how he got there or where he’s been. He knows it before he swallows, feeling the phasers strapped to him, remembering the feeling of Bucky’s hands in his hair, just a short while before. Steve just knows.

“Do you wish to save them?” Loki asks. He’s almost translucent, somewhere, a shimmer of green in the dark. Often, Steve will look at Loki and feel there’s something missing. Now, the feeling redoubles in force, takes on physicality. Loki is there, but he is also somewhere else. It’s neither illusion nor reality; it is simply Loki.

“I am,” Steve says. “I’m trying.”

“It will not be enough,” Loki says, tilting his head. “You know this. I can help you.”

“I can’t just leave them,” Steve says. “Not now.”

“You promised,” Loki answers. “You gave me your word.”

It takes a minute. Steve stares into Loki, through Loki, past Loki. It’s as though in this moment, he can see the immensity of _The Avenger_ , spread out across the dark of the staircase.

“I gave you my word,” Steve says, softly.

“And the word of Steve Rogers is gold,” Loki says.

“I have to say goodbye,” Steve says. “They need to know where I’ve gone.”

“You can’t,” Loki says. He gives Steve a piercing look, because he knows that Steve knows. It’s not that Steve doesn’t know. It’s that he doesn’t want to. “They will never let you go, but that will be their folly and yours. It is now or the death of your friends, Captain. The death of Bucky Barnes. The death of my brother.”

“Our plan,” Steve says. “It could work.”

“That is foolish. Your plan will get you all captured at best,” Loki says. “Slaughtered at worst.”

“Fury--”

“President Fury will be too little, too late. The time is now, Captain. Will you keep your word?”

Loki’s expression is unreadable, but then, it always is.

He extends his hand to Steve.

Steve closes his eyes, thinks of Sam and Natasha, Clint and Tony, Thor and Bruce. He imagines them even now, packing their weaponry, looking to one another for support, to carry out the parts of a plan so outrageously reckless that it will either work or it will fail disastrously, spectacularly, with all of the worst consequences. He thinks of Bucky, blue eyes shining bright, just one wish on his lips, a prayer, that he be given the chance to be human.

He takes a breath and opens his eyes. Then he takes Loki’s hand.

*

The spacecraft and airpod are waiting at a private air deck a mile out from the safehouse. Pietro shows up five minutes before their meeting time, a little out-of-breath, and shit-faced cheerful.

“I got to punch the man I did not like,” he tells Clint when the other man raises an eyebrow at him. “Wanda said it would not make a difference because he was not being cooperative. I told my sister, Wanda, you worry too much. This man I hate will cooperate. And he did, cooperate. No one ever listens to Pietro.”

“Probably because Pietro talks too much,” Natasha mutters. She hoists a leather bag full of--whatever it is that Natasha Romanoffs carry with them. “We go in groups. Clint and Thor first. I’ll come in behind with Barnes.”

“I have a bad feeling about this,” Clint mutters, close to her ear. Natasha stops, hand on his arm, an eyebrow raised. Clint shakes his head. “Nothing specific. I can’t pinpoint it. I’m just uneasy.”

“It will be fine,” Pietro says and Thor, who has since emerged, in a borrowed Captain’s suit from Steve, but has been strangely silent all morning, now agrees.

“It will be fine,” he, too says, although he sounds distant, as though he’s addressing something else entirely.

Behind him, Bucky stands, stony and silent.

“You are all very very weird,” Pietro offers.

Natasha’s glower is sufficient enough to actually make Pietro shut up. The group stands together, tense, an undercurrent of nerves rippling through a false layer of calm.

Thor clears his throat.

“Steve Rogers and Sam Wilson will bring us help,” he says. “We simply need to make HYDRA believe.”

Clint laughs at that, a little hollowly.

“We’re desperate, on the run, and down half our crew. I don’t think it’ll be a stretch for them.”

“Hope you’re good at stalling, Maximoff,” Natasha says as everyone starts moving. “If they start shooting before Fury gets to us, we’re fucked and I’m using you as a shield.”

Pietro clutches a hand to his heart.

“This is the thanks I get for assaulting a man and stealing his spacecraft to give to you,” he says.

“You’re all stupid,” Bucky says through gritted teeth, the first he’s spoken the entire time. “And you talk too much.”

“Oh,” Clint says, blinking mildly. “And here I thought nothing could fill the void Loki left behind.”

Thor walks past him, saying nothing.   
  
  
By the time Bucky and Natasha leave the safehouse, Bucky’s on edge as well. He can’t quite put his finger on it, but he privately agrees with Clint. He feels unsettled, somehow. He looks around them every few seconds, eyes scanning the horizon, processing the streets, assessing every nook and cranny that might possibly hold a threat.

 _Assess. Engage. Disarm._ His training, or brainwashing, runs through his head as they jog. _Alert. Overpower. Destroy._ And then, as his eyes flit across a small, blond child running along with his friend, _Keep him safe. Kill and keep him safe_ and--oh. That’s it, he realizes with an irritable jolt. Steve isn’t with him. He can’t keep Steve safe and it’s short-circuiting even his robot conditioning.

He takes a breath, tries to calm down, and--runs smack dab into Natasha. He goes stumbling, despite all of his training.

“What the f--”

“Fuck,” Natasha says. Then again, breathes out,"Fuck."  
  
"What--" Bucky's about to ask again, but then he hears Clint curse from somewhere up ahead.

“Holy shit. Motherfuck."

Bucky looks up and he can’t process it, for just a moment, what the black and metallic flecks mean. They spread across the sky in a methodical way, at an alarming rate, almost framing the horizon in a trypophobe’s worst nightmare. His thoughts come tumbling to a halt.

“Someone tipped them off,” Thor observes, calmly, still detached.

“There’s no way out.” Clint sounds ill. "There's nothing."

“We are _fucked_ ,” Pietro says.

Bucky just watches, a growing sense of nausea and something like horror he has spent the past ten years being brainwashed to ignore.

But then, worst of all. The thing that makes his blood run cold, the thing that actually makes Bucky’s stomach drop, his brain functioning stop entirely -- not the flecks across the sky, not the clear signs of being under siege, caught and cornered by HYDRA, not even the growing sound of blasts and the steady rattling of ammunition and lasers as they start a torrential downpour of firing -- Sam’s voice behind him.

“You guys,” Sam says, breathless, panting, rattled. “Where’s Steve?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The surprise was gay. Which is the best surprise. Also, only 100-some-odd thousand words later. Surprise!
> 
> If you're enjoying Space Gays: The Fic, I'd love to hear from you! Also word of mouth is greatly appreciated as is recommending/signal boosting on Tumblr/Twitter/whatever. :) 
> 
> Also, if you ever have any smaller fic or prompt requests, find me on Tumblr (@spacerenegades). I've been itching to write some Thorki, but will always write Stucky. Give me prompts! Help me help you.


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